Encyclopedia of American Loons

#285: Roy Moore

2012-01-28T10:39:00.003-05:00

Roy Moore is something of a legend in the history of the separation of church and state. A month after being elected to an Alabama court (despite being astoundingly incompetent, something he has shown again and again), Moore decided to erect a Ten Commandments statue for the Court lobby – replacing the one already there with a bigger one. He repeatedly insisted that the statue did not mean that the court, or he as a representative of the court, endorsed a particular religion. For instance, when the statue was unveiled, he included the following in his speech: “Today a cry has gone out across our land for the acknowledgment of that God upon whom this nation and our laws were founded … May this day mark the restoration of the moral foundation of law to our people and the return to the knowledge of God in our land.” The whole spectacle is covered here. In fact, one of Moore’s arguments was that the Ten Commandments monument could not offend any religion because all religions believe in the Ten Commandments; when asked about Hindus or Buddhists he said “they are not real religions so they are not protected by the First Amendment”. Problem solved.

After complaints and requests to remove the statue, Moore argued that he couldn’t do so, since removing it would violate his oath of office (also here) by making him act against the “moral foundation” of the law (“we must first recognize the source from which all morality springs … by recognizing the sovereignty of God”). To the argument that the statue violated the Establishment clause and the separation of church and state, Moore argued that it didn’t; it just showed that “the Judeo-Christian God reigned over both the church and the state in this country, and that both owed allegiance to that God”. Thus, the separation is upheld.

That argument didn’t fly with the courts (including Supreme Court), and Moore was told to remove the statue. That’s when the tumults started; Moore refused to follow the ruling, Ol’ Falwell threw in his support, there were protests, the courts ordered the immediate removal and Alabama faced daily fines unless they ensured its removal (Moore argued that using daily fines was illegal coercion and a violation of his rights). His followers were outraged that local courts didn’t refuse to follow the Supreme Court’s demands.

Moore has later clarified his arguments. No deity but the Judeo-Christian God can be held in official esteem in the US (and we have to hold him in esteem, since God is the metaphysical basis for the law), at least not if religious tolerance is to be maintained: “The Judeo-Christian God is the one that gives religious liberty. The Muslim God, Allah, does not give religious liberty”. See also this. It should come as no surprise that Moore has also endorsed Barton-style Christian reconstructivism (e.g. this), and that he is an ardent theocrat of the “religious freedom is important, so everyone must be Christian, else there cannot be religious freedom, since we would have to force those who aren't Christian to become Christian”-style. He is also a creationist, and he was the guy who during the gubernatorial campaigns accused Bradley Byrne of not being creationist enough.

Roy has toured the US with the giant statue he had to remove and writes for WorldNetDaily. He has also run for governor of Alabama (backed by Michael Peroutka and the Constitution Party) with little success, and did indeed consider running for president in 2012, but apparently abandonded the idea in favor of trying to regain a seat at the Alabama Supreme Court. His qualifications appear to be stellar.

Diagnosis: Almost unbelievably dense idiot, and his insanity and Taliban style fundamentalism have predictably made him a hero among certain groups of people. Overall, he is probably relatively toothless, but it is hard to say for sure.

#284: Richard Moore

2012-01-25T12:35:00.000-05:00

There are few things more detrimental to reason, sanity and the well-being of people than reporters who are absolutely ignorant of science, but nonetheless think they have uncovered something the public needs to know about (be it medicine, climate, biology or what have you). Such reporters tend to swallow the manufactroversies hook and sinker, and given some POMO background assumption that all viewpoints are equal, help present the voice of the loons as respectably as possible. The consequence is of course that readers, who cannot be expected to know the science either, may think there really is a controversy here.

The problem is exacerbated if said reporter becomes dimly aware that scientists (or government, or sane organizations) dismiss the “breaking news” he copied and pasted from the loon activists. Then, of course, he may come to think that it is his duty to crank up the volume to make the public aware that authorities don’t want you to know the truth.

Richard Moore: eat your cake. Moore is an “investigative reporter” for the Lakeland Times. He has enthusiastically endorsed the Age of Autism propaganda: vaccines cause autism, autoimmune disease, and all sorts of ills, and he sees it – apparently – as his duty to help spread the gospel. And Moore jumps in deep; not only is Big Pharma untrustworthy – they are actively killing you, in an unholy alliance with the government. And he trots out pretty much every lie ever peddled by the antivaxx movement (e.g. the numbers of cases of autism must have increased, for where are the adult autistics? Well, maybe here?). It never seems to strike him that it might be worth checking his sources. First, vaccines cause autism (and kills), then BigPharma ‘release “scientific” studies “disproving” any link between autism and mercury in vaccines”. See? Conspiracy proven. Of course, being completely scientifically ignorant, Moore is unable to point out any actual scientific flaw in any of the studies, but since they don’t agree with the position he has intuited himself into, there must – must! – be a conspiracy.

Moore is not alone, of course. The attitude is frighteningly common. With respect to antivaxx, the most egregious examples include the delusional and utterly moronic reporter (who currently enjoys intimate ties with the antivaxx organizations) Sharyl Attkisson in addition to the usual suspects, already covered or to be covered, Kirby and Olmsted. Steve Wilson of WXYZ-TV in Detroit is another example.

Diagnosis: A very common example of investigative reporting gone awry because the reporter is completely ignorant about the topic and assumes that if two fractions disagree, then their viewpoints are by default equally valid and justified. I am willing to claim that reporters like him constitute one of the major threats to modern civilization.

#283: Sun Myung Moon, his followers, admirers and associates

2012-01-23T11:38:00.001-05:00

The Unification Church, whose members are known as the Moonies, is a personality cult formed by “Reverend” Sun Myung Moon. Moon is a probable psychotic, gibberingly insane SPAGger from South Korea who has lived in the US since 1971. In fact, Moon claims to be the second coming of Jesus. He and his wife have been banned from entering several European countries.

He is popular in the US where the Unification Church has become something of a competitor to scientology. The difference that the Moonies are actually much crazier and more vile, and at the same time probably more powerful, wealthier and more influential. Back in the 70s Moonies were Hare Krishna-like fluffdolls who recruited stoned hippies (earlier it was more or less probably a sex cult back in Korea). But the organization was, and has become more overtly, hardcore rightwing. Among the teachings is the standard crap: anti-gay (Moon has called homosexuals “dung eating dogs”), that the victims of the Holocaust were paying indemnity for the crucifixion of Jesus, theocracy, channeling, and occultism (and of course, the famous arranged marriages of church members determined by the church). One of Sun Myung’s many sons, Heung-Jin Moon, died in 1984, but was apparently resurrected via Heung Jin Moon's embodiment in the body of Cleopas Kundioni, a Zimbabwean member of the Unification Church. Many Moonies referred to Kundioni as “the new Christ” (after all, revd. Moon is God). Apparently Kundioni exploited his position by beating up other Moonies.

However, the scary part isn’t only that Moon has millions of followers in the US; he also has billions and billions of dollars, and his Moonies own and run a long row of businesses and media (in the US and elsewhere): His Saelio Inc. owns the Kahr Arms Company; he owns the United Press International, Washington Times, the New World Encyclopedia, Insight magazine (notice the connection to Joseph Farah), runs the Universal Peace Federation and CAUSA International, and owns the True World Group (if you are eating sushi anywhere in the US chances are you’re paying Revd. Moon). The Moonies have also more or less absorbed Jerry Falwell’s empire and pretty much control Liberty University, and they run the InternationalConference on the Unity of the Sciences. A good resource for Moon-related business, media outlets and recruiting centers is here. The list of Moon-fronts is here. It is … long. Another list is here.

This one is worth reading as well. Another resource worth looking at is this.

In the mid-1990s, U.S. President George Bush senior accepted millions of dollars from Moon's Women’s Federation for World Peace to speak on Moon's behalf around the world (and he has repeated it later). In January 2001 Moon sponsored President George W. Bush's Inaugural Prayer Luncheon for Unity and Renewal. Bush Jr. returned the favor. George H. W. Bush's youngest son Neil Bush accompanied Moon on a speaking tour of Asian countries in 2005 (and retained the close association). Moon is also closely associated with ultraloon Louis Farrakhan, although that pales by comparison. Bob Dole and Chris Matthews are other names that have been on Moon’s payroll list.

In 2004 in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, D.C., Moon crowned himself with what was called the "Crown of Peace". Among the attendees were Senator Mark Dayton (D-Minn.), Representatives Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), as well as former Representative Walter Fauntroy (D-D.C.). Key organizers of the event included George Augustus Stallings, Jr., a controversial former Roman Catholic priest who had been married by Moon, and Michael Jenkins, the president of the American Unification Church at that time.

In April 2008, Moon appointed his youngest son Hyung Jin Moon to be the new leader of the Unification Church and the worldwide Unification Movement.

Diagnosis: Moon himself is a messianic fascist and utterly delusional Sauron-wannabe; absolutely everything about this man is wrong. His followers are therefore insane, and dangerous.

#282: Glenn Moon

2012-01-22T12:18:00.000-05:00

We’ll jump over some famous international (non-American) candidates, such as the incoherently babblingly insane loose cannon and ignoramus Viscount Monckton and the infamous virologist and Noble Prize winner Luc Montagnier, whose subsequent career has taken a slightly disconcerting turn.

Glenn Moon (not related to Sun Myung other than in spirit) may have received less attention, but he is surely no more in touch with reality. In 2009 Glenn Moon attempted to run for City Council in Livonia. You can watch a speech of his before the Livonia City Council meeting here. I am unable to discern exactly what policy he is suggesting, but in what is basically one unbroken sentence there are at least references to the police force in the 16^th district and an unhealthy number of occurrences of “Heavenly Father Almighty God in name God Son Jesus Christ Lord Savior Messiah” for a single sentence. It seems to be clear that Moon thinks his speech is delivered by “world historic spiritual leader prophet of God in name Jesus Glenn Moon” (“I” is generally more elegant), and that he views it as his responsibility to “lead this world of lost human souls to eternal salvation through Jesus” (which he makes to sound uncannily like he’s suggesting a Jim Jones move). It’s all weirdly and adorably reminiscent of Dr. Bronner’s Soap.

In general his political platform seems to have been centered on abortion, littering, firing non-believers and paying city employees a salary of $1 per year plus the love of Jesus Christ.

Diagnosis: Probably in need of professional care. Relatively harmless (and no, he didn’t get elected, although I guess the existence of Michele Bachmann means that I had to point that out).

#281: Edgar Mitchell

2012-01-22T12:07:00.000-05:00

A legend among nutjobs, Edgar Mitchell is a former Apollo astronaut who has actually walked on the moon. He is just as famous for being an UFO conspiracy loon, and is of course a hero among the UFO nutters because Mitchell must obviously have some insider info.

To undermine the last shreds of his credibility, Mitchell founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences (current president Marilyn Schlitz should be considered indicted by this entry as well). Noetic science is basically medical woo peppered with postmodernism (i.e. word-salads, reason and evidence are Western tools for oppressing other insights, and so on): “Noetic sciences are explorations into the nature and potentials of consciousness using multiple ways of knowing – including intuition, feeling, reason, and the senses. Noetic sciences explore the ‘inner cosmos’ of the mind (consciousness, soul, spirit) and how it relates to the ‘outer cosmos’ of the physical world.” His institute has unsurprisingly made it to Quackwatch. Among people associated with the Institute, special mention should go to DeanRadin.

Apparently Mitchell tried to conduct private ESP experiments with his friends on Earth during the Apollo flight, and he claims to have had his purported kidney cancer purportedly distance-healed by Adam“Dreamhealer” McLeod. Mitchell is also fond of (and may have been the inventor of) the Quantum Hologram (though the idea is old), the property of all physical things only accessible to psychics (i.e. Mitchell has no clue about quantum mechanics). According to Mitchell, the quantum hologram theory has explanatory power – it can explain RupertSheldrake’s morphic field theory, for instance. Not much else can do that.

Mitchell is sure that UFOs visit Earth and have been the “subject of disinformation in order to deflect attention and to create confusion so the truth doesn't come out” (like UFO-conspiracy nuts, Mitchell has no coherent story about exactly why the truth must be kept hidden). Apparently the evidence for such alien contact is “very strong” and “classified” by governments, who are covering up visitations and the existence of alien beings' bodies in places such as Roswell (i.e. the evidence is very strong, but Mitchell hasn’t actually seen any of it). UFOs have also provided “sonic engineering secrets” that have been helpful to the U.S. government.

Apparently Mitchell’s condition has declined over time (interview here). Currently the tenor is: “I happen to have been privileged enough to be in on the fact that we've been visited on this planet, and the UFO phenomenon is real.” He knows this since he has talked to people who were at Roswell back then, but who are conveniently dead at present. You can watch him call for the government to stop hiding the truth here.

This is an interesting description of Mitchell’s spectacular failure to experimentally prove ESP; it’s worth the read for the staggering methodological problems with the experiment – and Mitchell still didn’t get significant results (though he presented them as such).

Diagnosis: Wackaloon. He has a lot of followers (at least among the UFOers); whether he can really be considered particularly dangerous is a different matter.

#280: Chuck Missler

2012-01-22T11:15:00.002-05:00

A.k.a. The Peanut Butter Man

One of the most celebrated confirming instances of the Salem hypothesis, Chuck Missler is also a prominent Christian Zionist with ties to the far right Patriot movement, and an author. He and co-author Hal Lindsey plagiarized and published whole chunks of other people’s books back in the 90s before being called out on it. Some of the books, such as “Alien Encounters: The Secret Behind the UFO Phenomenon” and “Cosmic Codes: Hidden Messages From the Edge of Eternity” look rather enticing given the evidence for Missler’s general reasoning skills (Missler seems to be a William Cooper fan, but I might be mistaken).

He is by far most famous for the peanut butter argument against evolution. Whatever you do, you must see the video (also here). Basically the argument is that since life does not evolve spontaneously in sealed jars of peanut butter, it follows that evolution is wrong, and therefore Jesus. The value of the argument is probably that it is wrong on so many levels that it is almost impossible to pry them apart. It starts by defining evolution as “matter + energy = life” (huh?). Hence, it deductively follows that light shining on a peanut butter jar should spontaneously create life in that jar. Lots of people open jars of peanut butter every day, and this has never happened, therefore Jesus (the way Missler conceives of him) and the Rapture is drawing close. QED. It is closely related to the Banana Argument.

The argument is worthy of this list (enjoy).

Diagnosis: Terminally bewildered bozo vying with Ray Comfort for the title of “dumbest creationist”. Impact unknown.

#279: Scott Minnich

2012-01-22T10:03:00.000-05:00

Minnich is an associate professor of microbiology at the University of Idaho, and a fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. Together with Behe (and Ralph Seelke) he must count as creationism’s biological alibi. In fact, Minnich is the biologist who wholeheartedly swallowed Behe’s idea of “irreducible complexity” in bacterial flagella, which supposedly is evidence of intelligent design (although since ID remains unfalsifiable (partially because Behe and his accomplices counter all counterevidence by moving the goal posts), it couldn’t have been, but that’s another story). Minnich was thus an obvious choice for the defense in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. Part of his contribution to the defense was the fact that the previous year, Minnich and Stephen Meyer had presented a paper to an engineering conference entitled “Genetic Analysis of Coordinate Flagellar and Type III Regulatory Circuits” and the Discovery Institute lists this as one of its “Peer-Reviewed & Peer-Edited Scientific Publications Supporting the Theory of Intelligent Design”. The paper was, however, only reviewed for a conference presentation in engineering. I don’t think that counts insofar as scientific rigor is hardly the only (or even main) criterion for a conference presentation (more on the significance of Minnich’s testimony here). His actual publication record doesn’t show much sign of any support for creationism.

Minnich is also the co-author or “Explore Evolution” with Stephen Meyer (discussed under Meyer).

Diagnosis: Minnich tends to shy away from public debates and it’s hard to say how hard he rides his creationist hobbyhorse (most of his actual work seems to have nothing to do with it). Still, he does lend his credibility to the crazies, and must be denounced for that.

#278: Kevin Miller

2012-01-22T09:52:00.000-05:00

Kevin Miller was the screenwriter for the movie Expelled. He has actively attempted to defend the movie (including creationism and the associated persecution complex/conspiracy theories) in online debates by arguments from post-modernism – many (not all) facts are perspectival and subjectively constructed (such as the fossil record); therefore, the creationist interpretation (dismissal) of the evidence is just bringing in an equally valid point of view. It’s all about the worldviews, you see (scroll down to Elsberry’s list of Miller’s arguments – it’s pretty good). Not that Miller has really brought anything to the fossil data; his positive arguments for creationism are consistently “scientists disagree with creationists; therefore creationists are persecuted; therefore they are right” and “I have evidence; I’ll give it to you later. It will convince you. Therefore you should believe me now.”

And then of course there is the quote-mining.

He may have taken an intro course to Philosophy, for he likes to take the Phil of Science angle and claim that it is all about this. No.

Miller’s next movie is “Creation”, concerning the life of Kent Hovind.

Diagnosis: Typical hack who does not, and does not want to, understand science (he and Walt Ruloff took science out of Expelled because they, in their own words, “found it boring”). But he does want to argue against it, since he disagrees with its conclusion for religious reasons – which means your options are to claim persecution and conspiracy, arguments by word salad, and argument by assertion.

#277: Lionel Milgrom

2012-01-22T09:45:00.000-05:00

The Ken Ham of homeopathy, no single person has done more to torture quantum theory into the service of woo than Lionel Milgrom. Not that he has any understanding of quantum mechanics; but since his audience does not either, plastering the vocabulary of quantum theory onto his crackpottery to make it sound like Harry Potter spells seems to provide his readers with warm, fluffy feelings and the impression that Milgrom actually has anything to contribute. He hasn’t, of course.

Look, for instance, at one of his contributions to the “journal” Homeopathy. The article starts out with the Galileo gambit, conspiracies and persecution complexes. It goes downward from there. Can he provide evidence for homeopathy? Not a trace – and he even indirectly admits as much. The reason science cannot show that it works, you see, is that it works as follows: “[i]nstantaneous, acausal correlations are somehow established between various combinations of patient, practitioner, and remedy”. How? Well, by quantum, you see. How? I have no idea. Neither does Milgrom. It has something to do with our “vital force” acting as a “quantum gyroscope” upon which homeopathy can act. To get there, he uses the appeal to postmodernism gambit: “it’s all about the narratives” (scientists are evil and close-minded and in a conspiracy; I am the hero who stands on the outside; hence I am oppressed; hence I am right). Oh, and to top it he appeals to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle as a proof that there is no “underlying ontological physical reality” and why the observer effect explains that homeopathic remedies don’t work during clinical testing. This combination of confirmation bias, argument by assertion, wishful thinking and handwaving must really be seen to be believed.

He tries to achieve the same conclusions in this insane rant. Then he hit upon something obvious that would provide him with the justification he needed. That’s right. He discovered Dr. Emoto’s Water Memory Woo – truly among the most insane crackpot ideas in existence. View the unholy combination of Milgrom and water memory in all its glory here. Homeopathy is the “semiotic notion that the homeopathic remedy is a ‘sign’ working simultaneously in and for two different but connected meaningful contexts” (and if you nod in agreement with this, meet Dr. Sergio Stagnaro).

Diagnosis: Complete crackpot whose understanding of reality is sufficiently limited to make any claim to reason beyond his purview. Completely divorced from it (reality) and an outspoken critic of reason and sanity. Ardent and dangerous.

#276: Stephen Meyer

2012-01-17T16:29:00.000-05:00

Stephen C. Meyer is a philosopher and one of the hotshots of the Discovery Institute. And like some philosophers and all Discovery Institute people, he likes to make grand claims about scientific fields about which he must be counted as an illiterate. Meyer helped found the Center for Science and Culture (CSC) of the Discovery Institute (DI), which is the major hive for the ID creationist movement. Meyer is currently vice president and a senior fellow at CSC, and a director of the Access Research Network. He has been described as “the person who brought ID (intelligent design) to DI (Discovery Institute)”, he contributed to the second edition of Dean Kenyon’s “Of Pandas and People”, wrote (with Ralph Seelke) the ID textbook “Explore Evolution”, was appointed by the Texas Board of Education to be on the committee reviewing Texas’s science curriculum standards, is the primary link to DI sponsor and Taliban theocrat loon Howard Ahmanson, and was partly responsible for the Wedge Strategy, as well as an active speaker and debate panelist.

In 1999, Meyer (with David DeWolf and Mark DeForrest) designed a legal strategy for introducing intelligent design into public schools in the book “Intelligent Design in Public School Science Curriculum.” (I mean, the point of ID is to get creationism and religion into the schools, not to do science). He is perhaps most famous for trying to realize the strategy through helping to introduce ID to the Dover Area School District (more extensively here), and for his ridiculous 2009 book “Signature in the Cell” (which a probably drunk/dementia suffering Thomas Nagel actually praised, flaunting his own ignorance of science). PZ Myers was offered a review copy by Meyer’s assistant Janet Oberembt, but never received it. The book actually makes twelve “predictions” for ID (although they are not predictions in the ordinary scientific sense because they are not derived from any concrete theory, and they all concern testing the theory of evolution, not ID). He also offers a “theory”. The theory is unrelated to the predictions. He derives no predictions from his theory. He offers nothing resembling a coherent justification either, so the book didn’t receive much positive feedback from actual scientists. He has offered some appeals to authority, however (“Thomas Jefferson wasn’t a Darwinist”).

In March 2002 he announced the “teach the controversy” strategy aimed at promoting the false idea that the theory of evolution is controversial within scientific circles, following a presentation to the Ohio State Board of Education. Since Meyer knows this is false, he was lying, but dishonesty isn’t exactly a surprising trait in ID advocates. The presentation included a bibliography of 44 peer-reviewed scientific articles that were said to raise significant challenges to key tenets of what was referred to as "”Darwinian evolution”. When NCSE contacted the authors, none of the authors who responded (the authors of thirty-four of the papers) thought that their research provided evidence against evolution. Meyer also publicly claimed that the “Santorum Amendment” was part of the Education Bill, and therefore that the State of Ohio was required to teach alternative theories to evolution as part of its biology curriculum. Which is demonstrably false, but tells you a lot about the DI creationists.

Of course, he thinks there is active persecution of the purportedly fast-growing number of scientists rejecting evolution in Academia (probably because he cannot find any). He was interviewed about those claims in Expelled.

Diagnosis: One of the staunchest, most influential, most dishonest anti-science advocates in the world. Crackpot and complete hack.

#275: Joyce Meyer

2012-01-11T13:28:00.000-05:00

Pauline Joyce Hutchison Meyer is a Charismatic Christian author, speaker, and televangelist whose drivel is extensively distributed – her television and radio programs air in 39 languages in 200 countries. And she has written over 90 books (she’s a seemingly endless source trivialities, fluff, unsupported assertions and HR talk). Her husband Dave is a staunch supporter and helper. She also has a doctorate from Life Christian University. Guess whether that one is accredited (but she also has an honorary degree from Oral Roberts university…). Her deepfelt genuine altruism and care for people in difficult situations have earned her several homes and a private jet (described in detail here).

She’s an adherent of the prosperity gospel. Meyer’s ministry was one of the six put under investigation by Chuck Grassley’s window-dresser commission: “We laid hands on the check and prayed. I went and got all of our checkbooks and my pocketbook and Dave got his wallet and we laid hands on them and put the blood on them, asking God to protect our money, to cause it to multiply and to see to it that Satan could not steal any of it from us”. To ensure that people use their hard-earned money to make Meyer’s fortune multiply, she also panders a pretty bleak view of what will happen if you don’t follow her teachings (see here (this link has not been carefully controlled for content)).

Diagnosis: Should probably be filed under fraud, but whatever – she must probably believe at least some of the garbage that pours from her mouth. Very dangerous.

#274: Joseph “Joe” Mercola

2011-12-31T14:35:00.002-05:00

The Richard Hoagland of medicine, Joseph Mercola is an osteopath and a frighteningly popular alternative medicine guru and (more or less) cult leader. He advocates and takes seriously more or less any idiotic crackpot or anti-science idea he comes across, including but not limited to flu-denialism and anti-vaxx – even going so far as to work with Barbara Loe Fischer. He has claimed that modern medicine kills more people than it helps, that (consequently) BigPharma is really involved in a conspiracy to kill you/prevent you from accessing the real remedies, that the Pill is dangerous, that “toxic metals in vaccines and dental fillings” is the cause for a wide variety of ailments, that your shampoo is really dangerous, and that statin drugs are dangerous. He promotes, however, Gary Craig’s Emotional Freedom Technique.

His website (no, you don’t get a link) contains most branches of pseudoscience, all major sorts of crankery, every logical fallacy ever committed by man (some good ones in this), dishonesties and smearing. He claims to be uninterested in profit, but makes a lot of it from selling all sorts of bullshit remedies at a steep price. His trust in the naturalistic fallacy suppresses any real science or scientific evidence he may come across. His dietary advice adds random assertions to the naturalistic fallacy, and is in conflict with any advice given by serious organizations (rather, he thinks, people should eat … the products he sells). He also – obviously – peddles homeopathy (the piece commented on in this link was written by Amy Lansky and endorsed by Mercola) and the thoroughly debunked raw-milk idiocy (the idiocy here is pasted on pretty thickly).

Despite his denialism and anti-science stance (or because of it) Mercola has many supporters, especially among the delusional, the paranoid (whose distrust of government is so entrenched that they trust the word of any non-government-affiliated crackpot), New Agers (who are generally both) and other critical-thinking-challenged groups. He has even attempted to pander to the religious through the ridiculously distortive screed discussed here. He is pretty good at following the fads and exploiting current trends and fears, and has been voted the no.10 “game changer” by readers of the Huffington Post, which tells you more about HuffPo’s health section than Mercola. More here.

His popularity stems from a combination of idiots, his authorship of two New York Times bestsellers (“The No-Grain Diet” (with Alison Rose Levy) and “The Great Bird Flu Hoax”), and a stinking pile of other books. He has also been featured on several of the more woo-friendly TV shows, including Mehmet Oz’s show.

Diagnosis: Looking more and more like a cultmaster, Mercola is an addle-brained and chronically misguided woo-meister. He is severely dangerous, however, insofar as he has managed to gather a frighteningly substantial herd of followers.

#273: Ken Mercer

2011-12-29T17:31:00.000-05:00

Yes, we have been covering them again and again and again, but the Texas Board of Education cannot be exposed too many times, and Ken Mercer is really dumb (as Jon Stewart discovered). Mercer, who retained his seat on the Board in the 2010 election, calls himself a Libertarian, which means that he is a Taliban-style, conservative, religious fundamentalist wingnut (for whom words can apparently mean anything you want them to mean; see last post’s Ilana Mercer (no relation)).

Among his gambits are (you guessed it): “Some ultra-radical groups have not evolved to the point where they realize that the ‘theory of Evolution’ is just that – a theory”. Yes – Mercer just flaunted the most sure-fire indicator of scientific ignorance in the universe, the “just a theory”-complaint (see also here). A similar degree of scientific ignorance is displayed in his claim that that the fossil record shows “sudden appearance, stasis, and the sequential nature of groups”; Mercer seems blissfully unaware that in geological terms (and the “sudden appearance” is picked from geology) “sudden appearance” does not mean “popped into existence instantaneously” (a couple of million years is “sudden” in geological terms).

Given Mercer’s contributions to Texas’s education, this is pretty apt (after all, Mercer has argued that since scientists have made mistakes, they are untrustworthy).

Diagnosis: Close to the Platonic idea of a scientific ignoramus, Mercer is also blessed with an unhealthy dose of Dunning-Kruger, and blithely unaware of his own lack of understanding. He is definitely dangerous, however.

#272: Ilana Mercer

2011-12-29T17:27:00.000-05:00

Ilana Mercer is a Canadian citizen currently residing in the US, where she operates as a libertarian columnist for – you guessed it – WorldNetDaily. As opposed to most WorldNetDaily “libertarians”, Mercer has actually criticized paleoconservative viewpoints, but she has also often been a shill for the religious right. She is an ardent follower of Ayn Rand, especially where Rand’s not entirely coherent views coincide with those of the religious right. She doesn’t like homosexuality, and in a review of a book by Sciaberra on Rand and homosexuality, she said the following:

“I fear that what has emerged from Sciabarra's many fascinating personal accounts is a liberal and permissive narrative about sexuality that serves to denude sex of its Randian majesty and meaning.”

Read that again. Yes, she really said that. And with “the Randian majesty of sex”, Ilana Mercer has coined what is possibly the most bizarrely inane, absurdly lunatic neologism in the history of mankind. It qualifies her for inclusion in the Encyclopedia even if she had been the voice of reason in absolutely all other contexts. (A commentary concerning the incident is here). To top it, she has also talked about Glenn Beck’s “incalculable contribution to liberty”. She frequently fails at coherence, as seen here. In short, one kinda wonders whether she really knows what words mean; she actually seems to confirm that her grasp of the meanings of words is a little shaky herself.

Her view of American history is a font of the most ridiculous hagiography imaginable: “The idea that the founders were flawed, sinful men like you and me is current among a hefty majority of Americans, conservative too. It is wrong. Quite the reverse. The founders were nothing like us. Not even close. [… T]he American Founding Fathers were immeasurably better than just about anyone on earth today …”

And her personal brand of “libertarianism” is perhaps best characterized by the fact that she is a “Christian Nation” supporter. But then, we have already provided good evidence that Mercer doesn’t really grasp that “meaning”-thing, so who knows?

Diagnosis: Very deeply confused wingnut, although her tenuous command of concepts in general suggests that for all we know she might really be a hardcore communist who is severely word-processing-challenged.

#271: Angus Menuge

2011-12-21T10:09:00.002-05:00

There’s been a slew of creationists lately, and here’s another one. Angus Menuge is a professor of philosophy at Concordia University and has published stuff in (from a philosophical point of view) certain half-respectable venues (and in Christian apologetics journals). He is a hardcore Christian apologetic who claims to have been converted by C.S. Lewis – he claims to have been an agnostic before that but contradicts that claim well enough by himself (why do very religious people so often just blatantly lie about such things?). He is, as mentioned, a firm creationist, and he is also a Fellow at the Discovery Institute. During the Kansas evolution hearings he refused to answer the question of how old the earth is.

You can see him debate PZ Myers here. It ought to be slightly embarrassing to philosophers that a biologist, though he glosses a few interesting philosophical distinctions, is so much better at philosophy than philosophy professor Menuge. Here is a summary of his testimonial during the Kansas evolution hearings, showing that Menuge has no clue about biology, paleontology or critical thinking – and is pretty much a dabbler in philosophy.

He has also claimed that there is no doubt that the Darwinian inquisition is happening (no, I won’t provide a link). His main piece of evidence is the Richard Sternberg case. Menuge bases his interpretation of the case on the Discovery Institute’s press release.

Diagnosis: A sad case – for philosophy. Menuge is another shill for fundamentalist religion who pulls the usual tricks in his anti-science crusade. His impact is probably limited, however.

#270: David Menton

2011-12-09T10:16:00.000-05:00

Yes, we’re dealing with another absurdly confused creationist. David Menton is an anatomist (with a PhD) and a regular contributor to Answers in Genesis (AiG). He has, among other things, contributed to the study of baraminology, a crackpot discipline bent on providing a creationist alternative to Linnaean taxonomy and cladistics based on a Biblically literal young Earth world view. He also works at the Creation Museum and is involved with AiG’s journal, the Answers Research Journal. For instance, he, Anne Habermehl and David A. DeWitt contributed letters to vol.3 under the common headline “Baraminological Analysis Places Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis and Australopithecus sediba in the Human Holobaramin: Discussion”, which basically displays Menton’s (and the others’) shock that a creationist (Todd Wood) could consider other hominids human. As Menton says: “Most importantly, the Bible believing creationist will be careful to confine himself to speculations that are consistent with God’s Word.” That pretty much sums him up.

Maybe we misunderstand him. This ridiculous letter (from him, Georgia Purdom and Andrew Snelling) suggests as much. But no – and Menton sums up his position on science again here. While one may wonder why anyone would bother, it is at least nice to see a real scientist (Martin Brazeau) take down Menton’s delusional ramblings on Tiktaalik here. Menton has a PhD in anatomy, for crying out loud – one may wonder how he got that given the complete lack of knowledge of the issue displayed in his original piece. More here.

He has also been an accomplice in attempts to get creationism taught in public schools, and is a tireless opponent of what he calls “scientism”.

Diagnosis: The usual. While he’s not the biggest name in the movement, Menton is still a prominent champion of ignorance and delusion.

#269: Sean Meek

2011-12-07T10:49:00.005-05:00

Sean Meek’s application for an entry in our dictionary is pretty solid. Meek, who is Executive Director of Project CREATION, travels nationally speaking on such topics as: Creation is the Foundation, The Curse of Compromise, Including Creation in the Curriculum, and God's Revelation in Science and the Bible. He is zealously doing his small part in promoting ignorance and stupidity, and has to that effect created something called The Travelling Creation Museum, which sports “exhibits on the days of Creation, the Flood, the Ice Age, dinosaurs and much more. It also shows how the real scientific and historical information supports the Genesis account of Creation [… and] includes many authentic antiquities from the ancient world and reveals in a dramatic and visual manner the grandeur of God's creation.” He seems to be usually wearing a safari suit, and has a van. If you are interested in this sort of stuff, you can also check out Ian Juby’s Canadian version. More on Meek and Juby here.

Diagnosis: Meek seems to run his fight against reality with ardour and perseverance. To most (apart from the most delusional fanatics) his tenuous grasp on sanity will shine through rather clearly. He's probably rather harmless, in other words.

#268: Don McLeroy

2011-11-30T16:21:00.005-05:00

A.k.a. The Texas Dentist

McLeroy is a dentist. He is also a religious fanatic. In his own words: “Am I a religious fanatic? Absolutely. You’d have to be to do what I do.”

What McLeroy did, and what he was referring to, was being chairman of the Texas Board of Education. His term ended in 2009, and even though Texas’s insanely ignorant Taliban fundamentalist governor Rick Perry reappointed him, said reappointment was rejected by the Texas senate. Cynthia Dunbar remained, however.

McLeroy has, in his position as chairman of the Board, also attempted to reject advanced placement environmental science textbooks because they, in Don’s mind, contained errors (not found by any serious scientist). Over objections from experts in 2004, McLeroy also voted to approve health textbooks that stress “abstinence-only” in regard to instruction about pregnancy and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases.

In 2005, McLeroy – who is an utterly insane young earth creationist – conducted a sermon in his church, talking about the Board of Education, saying that naturalism is “the enemy” and that “Intelligent Design [is] the big tent [… b]ecause we’re all lined up against […] naturalism. Whether you’re a progressive creationist, recent creationist, young earth, old earth, it’s all in the tent of Intelligent Design.” The sermon is available online, as are McLeroy’s notes. He has also said: “I think what we’re doing is destroying America’s soul in science." Nevertheless, his mandate was how best to teach Texas’s kids about science.

His campaigns against evolution have been characterized by ignorance (especially here), lies, quote-mining, complete disregard of science and rank dishonesty. His motivation (in line with Gary Bauer and David Barton) is: “… we are a Christian nation founded on Christian principles. The way I evaluate history textbooks is first I see how they cover Christianity and Israel. Then I see how they treat Ronald Reagan – he needs to get credit for saving the world from communism and for the good economy over the last twenty years because he lowered taxes.” He seems to have got his talking points mostly from various creationist websites and the Discovery Institute.

The NCSE has provided a video of McLeroy’s statements. If you want to have your last hopes for the future of humanity crushed, see this (if our encyclopedia weren’t exclusively concerned with Americans, the whole country of India would presumably qualify).

Diagnosis: Flamingly moronic, ignorant Taliban-style religious fanatic bozo, McLeroy is one of the most determined and tireless crusaders against truth, science and knowledge, since these things, in McLeroy’s deluded mind, are among the biggest threats to religion. McLeroy has indeed managed to do real harm, but he is probably rather neutralized at present.

#267: Adam McLeod

2011-11-27T13:31:00.005-05:00

A.k.a. Adam DreamHealer

Adam McLeod is one of (apparently) many people who (apparently) struggles to distinguish fiction from reality. In McLeod’s case, the fiction is Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol”, which led McLeod to issue this less-than-entirely-coherent press release. Actually, McLeod has promoted what he discerns as Brown’s ideas here for several years. From the press release: “’The Lost Symbol’ addresses the power of intention as fiction, yet Adam DreamHealer has presented this as reality in his Intention Heals workshops and books for the last 7 years. Dan Brown references IONS (Institute of Noetic Science) several times and Adam shares an interesting history with the founder of IONS, Dr. Edgar Mitchell [to be covered later]. […] Adam has presented his ‘Intention Heals’ workshops across North America to thousands of participants on the power of our own intentions and self-empowerment in healing.”

Right. What’s it all about? In line with the best of woo, Adam props his dreck up with the word “quantum”. He claims he can simply look at a picture of someone with cancer and cure that person by “intent” over a distance, claiming it works by Quantum Holography. You can read about it, and the “evidence” for it (as presented by luminaries such as Gregg Braden & Bruce Lipton, internet kook Laura Lee, Spiritual Incarnation expert Chuck Laurenson and Hulda Clark disciple John Mullen) here. Adam’s own explanation attempt applies the words “energy” and “information” a lot, but does not display any sign of understanding what these expressions actually mean in any particular context. In addition to the “explanation”, he has also some (dubious-sounding) anecdotal evidence and the claim that he “has always sought a scientific explanation to support what he intuitively knows to be true as a healer: that our intentions influence our reality.” That’s called confirmation bias. At least “[h]e is continuing his studies in Naturopathic Medicine to become a Naturopathic Doctor.”

So much for science, I guess.

Oh, and concerning his anecdotal evidence: “Since 2006 Adam has been collecting survey results about intentional healing on his website. Thousands of people have responded […]. Astonishingly, over 75% of respondents rate their health issues as having improved significantly through the self-empowering techniques described in Adam's books and workshops. Using chi-square and binomial statistical testing, these results showed that a statistically significant number of people experienced health improvements.” Read that again. Slowly. If you have any understanding whatsoever of how to test medical hypotheses, your response better be “wtf?”. “On his website” is a clue; selection bias is another.

#266: Cynthia McKinney

2011-11-27T13:21:00.005-05:00

If we’d been doing an international encyclopedia, the British would have made some inroads at this point. After all, the British have flat-earther James McIntyre. They also have Gillian McKeith, who may not be a flat-earther, but given her general understanding of science might just as well have been.

But leave it to the Americans to come up with anyone as terminally insane as Cynthia McKinney. McKinney was a presidential nominee of the US Green Party in the 2008 U.S Presidential Elections (she did receive more votes than Ron Paul) and has long been a member of Congress representing Georgia. She lost her seat in Georgia in 2002, regained it, but lost it again in 2004 when she slugged a Capitol police officer. Alex Jones-style, McKinney believes more or less every conspiracy theory she has encountered.

A selection of claims McKinney has endorsed is that the US military shot and killed 5000 prisoners during Katrina and dumped their bodies, a multitude of 9/11 conspiracy theories (unsurprisingly), and that Jeb Bush was running a drug ring out of Columbia while he was governor of Florida. Conspiracy theories concerning famous assassinations endorsed by McKinney include believing that James Earl Ray did not kill Martin Luther King Jr., that Lee Harvey Oswald did not kill JFK, that Sirhan Sirhan did not kill Robert F. Kennedy, and – particularly vehemently – that Biggie did not kill Tupac.

The latter may or may not be the case, but part of the reason for McKinney losing her seat in 2002 was her obsession with the case and spending a little too much time and effort and governmental resources to deal with this question (she tried to pass a bill to release the government’s secret records on the murder).

Cracked.com lists her as the sixth most insane person who has ever run for president (I have a feeling the list may not be entirely complete).

Diagnosis: The Democrats' answer to Michele Bachmann, McKinney is really stunningly insane, and despite the good stuff she’s done, she is a real threat to sanity and society.

#265: Lydia McGrew

2011-11-26T12:45:00.011-05:00

Next up is Lydia McGrew. McGrew is another of the loons over at "What's Wrong With the World" (or W4), a collection of self-described "crusaders" who regularly exemplify exactly what is wrong with the world. McGrew earns her entry in the Encyclopedia by means of at least two striking instances of lunacy, one hilarious and one simply vile.

On the hilarious end of the lunacy spectrum, McGrew has argued that parents should not teach their children to believe in Santa Claus. In itself, this is not particularly noteworthy; this a view held by many Christians who would prefer to focus on (what they take to be) the true spirit of the holiday. The hilarious lunacy is found in her unique way of reasoning to that conclusion:

"Consider what it means to teach a young child to believe that Santa Claus is real. You are teaching a child that a person exists who is benevolent and has super-powers, who can do incredible things, who sees his actions while remaining unseen, who rewards good acts, and with whom ... the child can communicate."

McGrew then goes on to note with horror that many children, after they've learned that there's no such thing as Santa, will conclude that they shouldn't believe in that other benevolent invisible magic guy who secretly watches what you do and rewards/punishes you accordingly. That would be awful, of course, because McGrew knows that HER invisible magic dude is real. The irony of using a prolonged comparison between belief in Santa and belief in God to argue that belief in Santa is dangerous (instead of the more obvious conclusion one might draw from such a comparison) is apparently completely lost on her.

On the more vile end of the lunacy spectrum, McGrew has advocated making America an Islam-free zone (see a collection of comments here - some of the suggestions get even nuttier and more repugnant than McGrew's). How might we accomplish this, you ask? Among other measures, she defends halting Muslim immigration and revoking the visas of Muslim students, and further suggests (among other things) systematically refusing mosque-building permits (using non-religious justifications as cover) and screening military personnel for Islamic self-identification.

In short, McGrew is arguing that we should use religious affiliation to decide who gets to live here and who gets access to many privileges, with the goal of driving adherents of a religion she doesn't like out of America. There is no denying that McGrew and her crew are fascist crusaders for their faith, freedom of religion be damned.

Diagnosis: McGrew advocates some very vile, fascist, and dangerous ideas, but the hilarious irony of her "believing in God is a lot like believing in Santa" argument is almost awesome enough to make her overall influence on the world positive.

#264: Sean McDowell

2011-11-22T15:11:00.004-05:00

Sean McDowell is the terminally stupid offspring of last post’s Josh McDowell. Even more than his father, Sean is an ardent creationist who likes to make arguments like this one. Despite the intense competition, this must surely rank among the more obtuse creationist arguments out there; see also this). Sean McDowell has even coauthored a book with Bill Dembski titled “Understanding Intelligent Design”. They also compiled a list of “Ten Questions to Ask Your Biology Teacher About Intelligent Design”. Some optimists may have thought Dembski had a basic grasp of science by now. No such luck – unless he and McDowell know they’re being dishonest and just hoping that said biology teachers know nothing about the scientific method or science (in particular information theory) either.

Sean McDowell’s attempt to explain away Tiktaalik is, uh, noteworthy.

Diagnosis: More moronic even than his father, Sean McDowell takes the very effective and very common combination of zeal and ignorance to new heights. He hasn’t quite made an impact to equal his father’s in any respect, but makes up for that in obtuseness.

#263: Joslin “Josh” McDowell

2011-11-19T14:24:00.003-05:00

Josh McDowell is an evangelical preacher and Christian apologist – and one of the most famous ones at that. His book “Evidence That Demands a Verdict” tries to establish the historicity and divinity of Jesus and the inerrancy of scripture. To do that, he primarily uses Scripture (+ confirmation bias, selective use of (and mangling of) actual historical science). And he lies. A pretty extensive commentary on and rebuttal of his claims can be found here. The arguments are really, really, really bad. They belong either to the “Many people have died for their faith. Would they be prepared to do this for a lie? Therefore God exists” category, or the “Jesus Christ is either who he says he is, or he is the biggest con man history has ever known. But he cannot be the latter since he is the son of God, and no son of a perfectly good God could be a liar” category. And no, McDowell is no new Aquinas, even though certain other famous apologists may arguably make him look that way in comparison.

McDowell has been associated with Campus Crusade for Christ since 1964. He has also written “More Than a Carpenter”, “A Ready Defense”, “Right from Wrong”, “Why Wait?” (with Dick Day – a defense of abstinence) and a lot of other books. He’s very concerned about the Internet, however, since the Internet enables skeptics to share information with people who could otherwise have become good Christians.

Oh, and he is an ardent creationist. Little surprise there. He was in fact one of the adventurers who “found Noah’s Ark” with Bob Cornuke.

Diagnosis: No one begs the question quite like Josh McDowell; add to that the unerring reliance of selective use of evidence and pure confirmation bias, and you have a true loon. McDowell, the ur-godbotter, scores on all points, and his fame and influence should really be inexplicable.

#262: Jenny McCarthy

2011-11-19T11:52:00.004-05:00

The term “indigo child" was introduced by psychic reader Nancy Ann Tappe and popularized by our old friend Lee Carroll (of Kryon). According to Carroll indigo children represent the next step in human evolution, but we close-minded normal folks fail to recognize their potential and classify them as attention-deficit instead.

Now, Jenny McCarthy used to believe that she was an indigo mother and her son was an even more evolved crystal child (she even ran the website Indigo Moms). In 2007, however, McCarthy attended the University of Google for some weeks and decided that her child was vaccine damaged instead. And so it began. Currently McCarthy is the poster model for the antivaxx movement. She is a blatheringly obtuse, highly delusional flapdoodler, but rather persistent and apparently on good enough terms with the equally dense Oprah Winfrey (and the even denser Julie Deardorff) to become rather dangerous. Let us emphasize: McCarthy knows nothing about science, the scientific method, or medical science in particular. She does believe that she has scientific credentials, however, since she is a mother of a kid with special needs. See her explain her scientific credentials here (you can also see her arguments being evaluated by her peer here and here). Predictably, her favorite argument is the empathy gambit (also here); basically, it's “if you criticize my arguments that vaccines cause autism you are being callous since I have a child with special needs”.

McCarthy claims that her son's autism was caused by MMR vaccine but cured through chelation therapy. She has also written a book about it, “Louder than Words: A Mother's Journey in Healing Autism”, with which she appeared on Oprah and Larry King Live, occasions she effectively used to promote woo, incoherence, false hope and dangerous misadvice. As a result it is far from unlikely that she is personally responsible for the deaths of actual children. She is currently an activist for J.B. Handley’s crackpot organization Generation Rescue (see also this and this). Her teammate and boyfriend Jim Carrey was a staunch ally, but they have since broken up. Her doctor, the crackpot Jay Gordon, remains on her side however, though he denies being anti-vaccine (despite the fact that he obviously is).

McCarthy regularly writes for that horrible pit of cranky tripe, the Huffington Post, recently including – predictably – a defense of science fraud Andy Wakefield. Age of Autism’s Ann Dachel weighed in as well, in a piece of such wretched idiocy that she automatically qualified herself for mention in any serious encyclopedia of loons. Huffpo hasn’t invited McCarthy to contribute a regular blog – McCarthy’s writing skills are, shall we say, subpar – but she does contribute relatively frequently nonetheless, and her rants are usually slightly more unhinged than those of other anti-vaxxers who have previously weighed in on any particular issue.

McCarthy made it to #19 on Buffalobeast’s list of the 50 most loathsome people of 2010.

Diagnosis: Stupendously moronic crank whose level of lunacy is only matched by the firmness of her conviction that she is right, regardless of what reality says. She is zealous, and must be counted as one of the most dangerous loons in existence.

#261: Dennis McCarthy and the EErs

2011-11-14T15:25:00.004-05:00

One of the most die-hard, incomprehensibly silly crackpot theories out there is the “expanding earth” (EE) hypothesis (discussed here, in some detail). The current main exponent of the idea is probably superhero comic writer Neal Adams whose main support for the theory seems to be argument by animation. This guy, Guy, has also written several books (i.e. unpublished studies) on the topic apparently.

Dennis McCarthy is the crackpot idea’s main scientific alibi. He has actually written some “real science” stuff where he sensibly avoids taking up his whackaloon ideas. But he has also written extensively on Expanding Earth and – as a consequence – plate tectonic denialism (and subduction denialism; yes, there is denialism – there’s always denialism).

The discussion here may be informative. An explanation of his view can be found here.

Diagnosis: Super-crackpot who shows, once and for all, that even the most discredited and silly scientific theories just won’t die. He is probably harmless and the whole debacle is really rather fascinating.

#260: Susan Mazur

2011-11-14T15:16:00.003-05:00

Susan Mazur is a science journalist. She is most famous for credulously swallowing every piece of nonsense (especially concerning biology) she comes across from creationists and ultra-crackpots. It doesn’t really help that real scientists calmly explain things to her. The only thing that seems to stick in her mind is “conspiracy”. For example, see her claims concerning the debate surrounding Fodor & Piattelli-Palmarini’s epically clueless recent book. Part of her problem seems to stem from her obsession with the balloon animal übercrackpot rants of Stuart Pivar. She’s even written a book on the “controversies” among evolutionary scientists (praised by the creationists of Uncommon Descent), and is genuinely concerned with “exposing the evolution industry”.

Her incoherently muddled reports on evolution are gleefully read by creationists as evidence that the theory of evolution is in trouble, and while Mazur cannot probably be correctly classified as a creationist herself, she does lend them some help through her sensationalist misrepresentation.

Diagnosis: The epitome of bad science journalism, Mazur has turned into a sympathetic voice for anti-science crankery everywhere. As such she is probably causing some harm. Complete idiot.

#259: Mark Mathis

2011-11-14T15:02:00.006-05:00

Mark E. Mathis is a movie producer and media consultant. He is currently the president of Mathis Media, LLC, a media-consulting firm. He is most famous as the associate producer for the pro-creationism movie “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”, which attempts to convince viewers of a conspiracy within the scientific community to silence supporters of intelligent design (or more precisely distort facts to make it look like a conspiracy). A useful but slightly too positive commentary is found here.

This means, of course, that Mathis was personally responsible for misleading evolutionary biologists PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins to get them to appear in the film by presenting the project to them as wildly different from the movie he actually produced (in addition to the usual cut and paste). It was also Mathis who – famously – personally prohibited Myers from viewing the movie, even though he appears in it. Both Mathis and his partner Walt Ruloff predictably misexplained the incident rather feebly.

The animation company XVIVO has also notified the producers that the company would sue for copying a film.

Mathis knows absolutely nothing about evolution. That of course does not prevent him from claiming that it is an unscientific and false theory, of course, which to be expected of hardcore creationists.

Diagnosis: Your typical hardcore dishonest know-nothing who sees a conspiracy whenever the facts don’t line up with his ideology. Complete hack, but his actual long-term impact is uncertain.

#258: Peter Marshall

2011-11-14T14:37:00.004-05:00

Rev. Peter Marshall of Peter Marshall Ministries in Massachusetts has suggested that California wildfires and Hurricane Katrina were divine punishments for tolerance of homosexuality (not an uncommon claim among the less cognitively gifted). Therefore (it seems) he was appointed by the Texas Board of Education to consult on the social studies standards. The goal of the TBoE was of course to get the Christian Nation nonsense into the schoolbooks.

As expected, the criminally ignorant Marshall is a huge fan of David Barton’s work. He argued that the claim that the Founding Fathers were influenced by Enlightenment thought is at best exaggerated. The Founding Fathers were influenced by the Bible. There is a question whether Marshall is just ignorant or flat out lying. Probably both.

He also argues that the Constitution does not protect the separation of church and state. In fact, it seems that Marshall has adopted Barton’s general rhetorical strategy of trying to spread lies faster than real historians can refute them.

Diagnosis: Bald-faced, willfully ignorant, remorseless and relentless Liar for Jesus. He seems to have a rather central position in the Christian reconstructionist movement, and must as such be considered moderately dangerous.

#257: Perry Marshall

2011-11-02T16:15:00.007-04:00

Perry Marshall is still something of a legend among the more clueless creationists (at least this fellow, one D. Donohew, seems smitten, but I am not sure Marshall can really be blamed on the unnervingly Time Cubish quality of that letter). Marshall’s schtick is “Information theory disproves evolution”. His master argument is 1) DNA is not merely a molecule with a pattern; it is a code, a language, and an information storage mechanism; 2) All codes are created by a conscious mind; there is no natural process known to science that creates coded information; 3) Therefore DNA was designed by a mind. It's a pretty decent example of begging the question for intro to critical thinking-students, I’d say. His rant is here, and further underlines the rather question-begging nature of his enterprise: both that DNA is a code (by definition) and that codes cannot occur naturally (by definition – since they are meaningful). Some might even say that there are traces of a fallacy of equivocation in an argument of the kind “DNA is a code; all codes are meaningful (DNA contains information and is meaningful) – that is: some agent with intentions must have meant something by it; if no one meant anything with the code in the DNA, it wouldn’t really be information; thus, evolution is false”. He repeats it here.

Marshall likes himself some ridiculous inferences from math. From a slightly misleading presentation of Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, he immediately explains: “This is what it means: Faith and Reason are not enemies. In fact, the exact opposite is true! One is absolutely necessary for the other to exist. […] All closed systems depend on something outside the system. You can always draw a bigger circle but there will still be something outside the circle. Reasoning inward from a larger circle to a smaller circle is “deductive reasoning. […] Reasoning outward from a smaller circle to a larger circle is ‘inductive reasoning.’” That’s not Gödel’s incompleteness theorem and its corollaries, to put it mildly.

Marshall’s real business seems to be some kind of Ethernet guru and expert advisor on Google Adwords (I think it is the same guy, but may be wrong).

If you have the stomach for it, you can read (about) Randy Stimpson writing similar tripe here.

Diagnosis: Pure crackpot, egregious mangler of facts and (apparently) professional Chinese Room – he writes about mathematics, but somehow he seems to fail to grasp what it is all about. In short, Marshall stands to Dembski roughly as Ray Comfort stands to Behe.

#256: Bob Marshall

2011-10-23T10:59:00.002-04:00

Bob Marshall is a Republican member of the Virginia House of Delegates representing the 13th District, currently serving his 7th term. He is most famous for his vocal opposition to all forms of abortion and birth control that take effect after conception. (“We're against the IUD and pills, too. They don't prevent ovulation and conception, they prevent implantation, which is abortion.”). He also voiced his opposition to Norplant, a contraceptive (not-yet-marketed at the time) that is implanted under the skin and works for up to five years (“It's a real tribute to women's intelligence. They feel so irresponsible they can't do something once a day?” – you get the feeling that its being offensive to women’s intelligence wasn’t the real reason for Marshall’s opposition).

But fair enough. Marshall’s break with sanity is also demonstrably displayed in his response to questions about abortion in the case of incest; Marshall’s response was simply that sometimes incest is voluntary. He is also opposed to abortion in the case of rape: “The woman becomes a sin-bearer of the crime, because the right of a child predominates over the embarrassment of the woman.”

His main claim to fame, however, is his statement regarding disabled children: “The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children ... In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There's a special punishment Christians would suggest.” That one raises some questions over and above Marshall’s seemingly complete lack of concern for facts; as Steve Singiser pointed out: “Perhaps Bob Marshall would like to explain what "vengeance" is being sought upon those loving parents of their one and only exceptional child.” Marshall made some unsuccessful attempts at backpedalling.

Following the repeal of DADT, he proposed a bill to “ban gays from openly serving in the Virginia National Guard” [allegedly] because he is worried about service members catching sexually transmitted diseases from gay troops. Also: “It's a distraction when I'm on the battlefield and have to concentrate on the enemy 600 yards away and I'm worried about this guy whose got eyes on me.” More on Marshall’s view of gays here.

He has furthermore jumped on Ken Cuccinelli’s bandwagon of trying to harass climate scientists into silence for uncovering facts he doesn’t like.

Diagnosis: Bigoted wingnut, Taliban fundamentalist and general loon who is – predictably – pathologically unable to recognize facts that don’t line up with his ideology.

#255: Robert J. Marks II

2011-10-23T10:50:00.002-04:00

A.k.a. Galapagos Finch

Robert Marks II is a Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor University, a proponent of intelligent design and one of Bill Dembski’s closest associates. He has a lot of peer-reviewed publications; evidence for intelligent design is not part of his publication record (though he sometimes seems to think so). Some of his stuff with Dembski has been published online, but that is a different matter (the link also includes a critique of the draft). And one paper has actually been published in an IEEE journal, although it doesn’t quite show what Dembski & Marks want to believe that it shows (see also this). Together Dembski and Marks seem to be rather obsessed with Dawkins’s famous “weasel” program (see also this and this), but they never quite seem to understand it.

Marks’s substantial knowledge of mathematics seems to have a tendency to get gappy once creationism (and, by extension, religion) is involved.

For the nickname, Galapagos Finch, see this one.

Diagnosis: A good scientist in many respects, to be sure, but also another example of the fact that when cherished religious doctrines get in the way even good scientists may resort to pure crackpottery.

#254: Jan Markell

2011-10-23T10:42:00.002-04:00

Jan Markell points out that countries in Europe are suffering a financial crisis. European countries are socialist. Hence they are suffering a financial crisis because they are socialist. And she argues forcefully that America is failing to heed the clear warning here – Obama is still promoting unabashed socialism, so America may quickly follow the socialist European countries down the drain. As an example of “unnatural” American socialism, at least the health care reform was clearly against God’s plan for health care.

So who is this perceptive finance analyst and political analyst? This economic genius is the founder of Olive Tree Ministries. She seems to have learned her economy and politics from the Bible. From the Bible she also learned that the world is going to end pretty soon and that “you cannot understand the times today without understanding the proper kind of eschatology”.

She is strongly opposed to globalism (or at least sees it as a sign of the end times which, given that the end times are part of God’s plan, makes her opposition a little weird). Global warming, for instance, is just a pretext to sign up for a global government and a new world order. She didn’t like the fact that Minnesota back in 2006 elected a Muslim to congress either.

You can read more of her rants here.

Diagnosis: Stock fundie, Taliban crackpot and professional moron. Impact unknown.

#253: Bryan K. Marcia

2011-10-19T16:49:00.015-04:00

To be perfectly honest, I am not sure how central Bryan K. Marcia is in the movement, but at least he can serve as our Encyclopedia’s representative of one of the biggest, most insane crackpot phenomena out there: Iridology; the most famous proponent in the States, Bernard Jensen, is currently dead and thus disqualified). Marcia may even be Canadian (he probably is, but he got his educational degree from Hawaii – the cnri website emphasizes that his educational institution was accredited – so there is at least this justification for including him).

For the uninitiated, iridology is the study of the iris to diagnose disease. The governing idea is that every organ in the body has a corresponding location within the iris and that it can be determined whether an organ is healthy or not by examining the iris rather than the organ itself. The view has absolutely no scientific support, and tests show that even iridologists themselves fail miserably in distinguishing between healthy and unhealthy individuals (and the rate of agreement between individual iridologists is hardly better than chance either). See the perfectly insane responses to this article here. The utter silliness of the idea is well illustrated by this piece from a former iridologist - and he is not the only one.

Bryan Marcia is at least an iridologist and seems to be counted as something of an authority in the iridology movement, in particular for his educational work. He has also worked with the legendary Dr. Jensen, and seems to be primarily responsible for the “educational” institution cnri.edu. The course description for the iridology course can be found here or here. The first of those pages also includes a useful list of iridologists in the US and other countries, although many of the names return preciously few google hits.

Diagnosis: Über-crank who is mired in the deep end of the fluffy pool of altmed. The popularity of iridology is unclear, but as with all woo it has the potential to cause some real harm to real people.

#252: Michael Marcavage

2011-10-19T11:16:00.004-04:00

Repent America (RA) is a Philadelphia-based organization that “desires to be in the full Will of God and to adhere entirely to the teachings of the Bible. We have a passion to serve the Lord and are devoted to reaching the lost, so that they might come unto the knowledge of the truth and be saved.” Michael Marcavage is its founder and director, and a tireless crusader against such evils as evolution, abortion, and homosexuality. Especially homosexuality. Marcavage is perhaps most publicly famous for being arrested for hate crimes (in Pennsylvania) due to his, uhm, colorful street preachings (and terrorizing individual homosexuals), and also for his and his organization’s protests against the gay pride event Outfest. A panel with the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit unanimously overturned the federal convictions of Marcavage for the first case, and the second led to the striking down of the amendments to Pennsylvania’s hate crime laws under which the RA members had been charged.

That may be fair enough. But to give you a feeling for the kind of thing Marcavage preaches: “[The Bible] does talk about how [homosexuals] are to be put to death. The wages of sin is death. But I want to make [it] clear that I’m not advocating the [independent] killing of homosexuals ... I’m saying that the government’s duty is to uphold God’s law.” The full story of Michael and his beliefs (and the court cases, and his utterly despicable associate Rev. Craig Stephen White) is here.

Following the Dover trial RA members of Repent America went door-to-door visiting thousands of homes to proselytize and invite people to RA’s creation seminar (complete with Kent Hovind) in the Dover Area High School auditorium.

Marcavage is also a, uh, "zionist-critic" with a persecution complex, claiming that Jewish organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League and the American Civil Liberties Union are targeting Christians because of their faith. He has also (predictably) claimed that Hurricane Katrina was a punishment for ze gays: “Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city”. And to crown the insanity, prior to the 2004 election he urged voters not to support Bush. Why? Bush is a radical liberal – he appointed a gay ambassador (“There are people representing the U.S. in Romania sodomizing each other”), and had failed to overturn Roe V. Wade. Marcavage has even been featured on the Alex Jones show.

At least David J. Stewart of jesus-is-savior.com supports him (the site must be seen to be believed).

Diagnosis: Wailing maniac who seems hell-bent on outdoing Fred Phelps himself for sheer repugnance and craziness. His number of followers is probably limited, but he seems intent on causing as much mayhem as possible on his own.

#251: Jeane Manning

2011-10-13T09:16:00.002-04:00

We’ve touched on the HAARPers before. In fact, Jeane Manning is Nick Begich’s close colleague in forwarding this, the mother of all tinfoil hat conspiracies. Manning and Begich provide a hilariously insane summary here of what it is all about. The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program is, of course, a scientific research program designed to study the ionosphere of the earth and its effects on communication. Manning and Begich, however, claim to document that it has been developed for manipulating and disturbing human mental processes through pulsed radio-frequency radiation over large geographical areas (their evidence seems to be the utterly compelling fact that Brzezinski in the 60s was musing about (without a shred of evidence or even theory to back it up) whether something like that might actually be possible at some point in the future). Begich’s and Manning’s book “Angels Don't Play This HAARP” also “explains a principle behind some of Nikola Tesla's inventions – resonance – which affect planetary systems.” Indeed. Tesla seems to continue to appeal to tinfoil hatters like lightbulbs appeal to moths.

Apparently, HAARP may also destroy the earth. Oh, it’s rather fun trying to google up the various “experts” and “physicists” they are quoting. Do try it.

Seems like our old friend Dan Croft has also decided to lend is credibility and wisdom to the HAARP issue. Way to go.

In addition to HAARP Manning seems to be spending some energy promoting crackpot physics and quantum woo, for instance on how “space-energy” (aether) is the source of free energy for the future and (apparently) explains how magnets work (again, trying to google the various “experts” she quotes is pretty fun; they include über-crank Tom Bearden, whom Manning seems to have a recurring fascination with). It is, of course, completed with conspiracies, persecution complexes and Galileo gambits.

According to her website, New Energy (which seems to be a mangled symbiosis of quantum woo and appeal to nature) is her main project, and she has written a couple of books on the issue, including “Break Through Power” (with Joel Garbon). The goal of the New Energy movement seems to be to find unlimited resources of free energy (without harm to the environment). For the most part, their approach seems to be to reject contemporary science and rather base their “scientific” framework on Tesla. There’s a website here (Garbon seems to be the president).

Diagnosis: Tesla Crackpot. Nuff said.

#250: James David Manning

2011-10-07T04:05:00.004-04:00

J.D. Manning is the chief pastor at the ATLAH World Missionary Church on 123rd Street in New York City. Manning is a staunch enemy of the gentrification of Harlem and has called for its residents to boycott its shops, restaurants, doctors, banks and churches. Combined with a general rent strike, this would according to Manning force all property owners out of Harlem and leave the neighborhood to its rightful inheritors: black people. He calls his plan “No Dew, Nor Rain,” apparently after Elijah's warning to Ahab. The whole of Harlem, he said, is to be a "drought zone." Maybe you can make sense of it yourself. More here. In fact, Manning has made the general claim that African-Americans should not support Kwanzaa, the NBA or any major Black-owned business.

But OK – despite its fundamentalist trappings, maybe this is nothing more than fiercely militant idealism?

Perhaps. So why does Manning count as a loon? The fact that he prides himself on his Doctor of Philosophy degree from his own (unaccredited) ATLAH Theological Seminary should give you a clue. Mainly, however, Manning has been a fierce critic of Obama. He has, among other things, called Obama's mother "white trash" for becoming pregnant by a black man out of wedlock. His well-reflected, erudite criticism also involves frequent comparisons with Hitler and calling Obama “long-legged mack daddy.”

In fact, Manning is a staunch birther. He's gone as far as conducting large-scale mock trials, charging Obama with being a Muslim CIA agent and putting up signs like this one (“The blood of Jesus against Obama, history made 4 Nov 2008, a Taliban Muslim illegally elected president USA Hussein”). “CIA”? “Taliban”? Oh yes, you see in the 1980s Obama was really a CIA agent who was working with the Taliban. The commonly held belief that he was a student at Columbia is only a fictional cover-up. See Manning explain the details here. Oh, and Obama is also an emissary of Satan.

Diagnosis: Rabidly insane christopath. His impact must surely be limited, but he does seem to have some followers. That’s not funny.

#249: Christopher Maloney

2011-09-26T23:45:00.005-04:00

Christopher Maloney is a Maine-based naturopath who provides medical recommendations like this: “Parents waiting for vaccinations can provide their children with black elderberry, which blocks the H1N1 virus. A single garlic capsule daily cuts in half the incidence and the severity of a flu episode for children". Pure, medieval magic, in other words - completely out of touch with anything resembling science or evidence. Maloney combines his "alternative" advice, in a typical manner, with a solid dose of martyr complex.

Unlike most medical mavericks, Christopher doesn’t usually attempt to bully critics into silence. Rather, he gets his lawyer wife Maeghan to do so. In fact, über-crank Andreas Moritz (who will be covered later) seems to have assumed responsibility for bullying Maloney’s critics, at least on certain occasions.

Fortunately for the rest of us, Christopher seems to be pretty bent on taking his leaks against the wind.

Diagnosis: To avoid the possibility of any tiresome legal issues we’ll avoid explicitly calling him a “quack”, which has a clear legal definition.

#248: Bruce Malone

2011-09-17T18:52:00.002-04:00

We had some hesitation over Michelle Malkin. Vileness doesn’t qualify you for an entry by itself, and is Malkin a loon? Well, the incident where she saw an ad Rachel Ray did for Dunkin' Donuts and decided that the black-and-white paisley scarf Ray was wearing was a sly sign of support for the Palestinian Liberation Organization gets her very close (here is her own screed).

But to avoid accusations political bias, we’ll move to a very clear case: Bruce Malone. Malone is – you guessed it – a young earth creationist who travels around the country (at least Minnesota) giving talks on issues he knows nothing whatsoever about to audiences who generally know nothing about the issues either. Standard fare. For a summary of his talk “Astounding Evidence for a Young Earth”, you can look here. His argument that Genesis must be read literally (“days” meaning “24-hour days” rather than being a metaphor for millions of years) goes like this: “If God made the entire Universe and all in six days and rested on the seventh, it's 24 hours. If ‘days’ equals ‘millions of years’ then you could not rest on the seventh ‘day’ because it would be millions of years.” Yes, that’s the quality of his evidence. That, and conspiracy theory: the reason scientists don’t accept his (Malone’s) theories is because they don’t want to lose their jobs.

Diagnosis: A sad figure; he is not particularly original, but he is apparently a rather tireless peddler of silliness and nonsense.

#247: Bill Maher

2011-09-17T10:23:00.008-04:00

Never let it be said that we don't pick on liberals here. Maher may have said some clever things in his life, even as a political commentator (he runs the HBO show Politically Incorrect), and he has gained notoriety as a critic of religion (for a focus on Maher’s positive contribution, see this). Then again, David Berlinski wrote an excellent introduction to calculus. Being smart, and being right on certain topics, doesn’t guarantee that you are not a loon. Bill Maher is a first-class loon.

For one, he is associated with PETA, which is at least borderline. After all, PETA has decided that fish should now be known as "sea kittens" (to stop global overfishing) and they have sent demands and cash offers to towns requesting that they change their names, including Hamburg, Fishkill and Rodeo. Their alternative for Hamburg was Veggieburg. The suggestion was serious. They also had a campaign against eating meat called “The Holocaust on your Plate".

In any case, Maher is an anti-vaccinationist and a germ theory denialist, which means that he belongs to the looniest of the kooks of there. He has even made the tired but stupendously idiotic (and false) claim that Pasteur recanted germ theory on his deathbed, which is as idiotic as the strangely parallel, idiotic and false claim about Darwin. Predictably, Maher’s anti-vaccinationist rants are the typical straw man and conspiracy theory mongering. To get an idea of the depth of Maher’s ignorance and idiocy, look at the dialogue reported here.

Some severely mentally ill person at whale.to thinks Maher is a Satanist, but then almost everyone else are apparently Satanists according to the site.

Diagnosis: Sorry, Maher is a total moron, and as cranky and anti-science as they come. He may not primarily be known for his anti-science lunacy, but he has enough followers to be worth paying attention to. A potential threat to reason and truth.

#246: Casey Luskin

2011-09-14T12:39:00.003-04:00

a.k.a. the Baghdad Bob of creationism

Casey Luskin is a lawyer (and not a scientist, although he seems to be a little confused about what such credentials do or don't mean) and one of the primary spokespeople for the Discovery Institute. Mr. Luskin obtained a Bachelor of Science and a Masters Degree in Earth Sciences from the University of California, San Diego, and has as a lawyer published “Intelligent Design Will Survive Kitzmiller v. Dover”, and “Alternative Viewpoints about Biological Origins as Taught in Public Schools” (published in the Journal of Church and State). His work illustrates well the actual goal of the Discovery Institute – to get religion, in the form of intelligent design creationism, into public school curricula (not to do any actual scientific research).

Luskin is by far most notorious for his ability to distort scientific evidence to suggest conclusions completely opposite to what the evidence suggests (and curiously always to fit his preconceived notions of what it ought to show), such as here. An even better example of the distortions and quote mining (to put it mildly) he usually reverts to is perhaps this one (or this one). And if you are feeling particularly sadistic, you can watch Luskin getting completely eviscerated here.

The problem with Luskin and his ilk is that they're ignorant of a topic about which they believe they're experts (see The Dunning-Kruger Effect). Luskin appears to believe he’s an expert with absolute confidence and pride, but to anyone with even a cursory understanding of the fields in question his failings are miserably obvious (see also this). In fact, his misunderstandings of science – and his lack of awareness of his own lack of understanding – often reach epic proportions.

Luskin is also interestingly paranoid, going so far as to claim that published articles on evolution contain “veiled threats” against the creationists and that Nature, for instance, has launched a propaganda war on creationism. Of course, science itself is a threat to creationism; what Luskin fails to grasp is the fact that science is concerned with evidence, not argument and polemics. By failing to see the difference (and furthermore failing to distinguish criticism from personal attacks) he comes to equate scientific evidence against his dogmatic beliefs with personal attacks from the scientists who have discovered the evidence (for more on Luskin’s lack of understanding of how science works, see this).

A good assignment in an introductory critical thinking class is to identify some of the mistakes Luskin makes here (I have used it myself).

Diagnosis: Staggeringly cranky illustration of where Dunning-Kruger, confirmation bias and complete lack of understanding of science can lead you. He is very productive and vociferous, and must be considered rather dangerous to a rationality-based, modern civilization.

#245: Nancy Luft

2011-09-14T12:08:00.009-04:00

Nancy Luft may lack notability, but makes up for it in unhinged craziness bred of paranoia and complete detachment from reality. They are out to get us, you see. It is a little unclear who and how, but it seems to be the government or the Russians (Luft claims to receive ESP messages from “The Special Sputnik Forces” of the Russian military). It has something to do with Mount St. Helens as well (which the Russians blew up with sputniks), and among her warnings to the general public is this: “Washington DC is trying to copy Russian sputniks with gamma ray, x ray, lasers that already exist which might cause the Russians to annihilate US!” It sounds scary, but I fail to see exactly what Luft thinks the threat is, and I’ve read the warning a couple of times.

At least she gives us some pertinent political analysis:

“Democracy leads to socialism, which lead so communism, fact of life! That is why Rockefellers' Rich Man's Mafia overthrow our democracy, our government, our constitution! Right wing is the dominant male primate ruling the pack (or a tiny group of the ruling the pack). Homo sapiens are primates, so that means royalty, popes, tribal chiefs, tiny group of rich with their political puppets, tyrants, dictators, etc., ruling the pack or masses or The People.”

Again, it sounds scary, but it is hard to see what exactly the threat is supposed to be. Apparently the Sputnik forces killed Michael Jackson, however.

You can find more of her insane rants here.

Among other things, Luft also chimed in on the Elizabeth Smart disappearance. While there were plenty of insane kooks weighing in here (this one is hilarious), Luft’s must have been the most deranged: She claimed to receive an ESP messages (from “The Special Sputnik Forces”) that a “man in a golf hat” had abducted Elizabeth. That’s not worse than many of the others, but Luft, who advocates the poor killing the rich (Smart was from a relatively well-off family), couldn’t help adding that the kidnapper was “my beloved” and that she hoped he tortured the girl before he killed her.

Luft, who claims to be a disciple of Jeane Dixon, came to our attention via this fabulous site. Do check it out.

Diagnosis: In serious need of help to find her way back to a semblance of reality. Her influence may be limited but she has achieved some notoriety on the web (not generally by people sympathetic to her insane rants, however). Here's a link to ratbags' 'where is Nancy Luft' quest.

(ed note: I couldn't locate a photo of Luft, so instead you get a nice photo of Sputnik; rather fitting, I think)

#244: Marvin Lubenow

2011-09-14T11:54:00.013-04:00

Lubenow is a young earth creationist most famous for his work on explaining (away) the fossils of early hominids such as homo erectus. In line with the usual creationist approach, the early hominids have to be explained away as either humans (perhaps as races that disappeared in the Flood – or, as according to Kurt Wise, Babel; see here or here) or as apes. It has generated a lot of ridiculous controversy within the creationism movement, and Lubenow disagrees, for instance, with Answers in Genesis’s A.W. Mehlert on the classification of homo habilis as probably human (for more on the various, completely arbitrary creationist positions, see here (dealing with Lubenow in particular) and here).

While he appears (to the uninitiated) to have some grasp of the language of the relevant sciences, Lubenow just doesn’t understand it (he has a master in theology, and an M.S. with a major in anthropology, but no relevant education in the relevant fields – though he has a honorary degree from Christian Heritage College, Tim LaHaye’s institution). The lack of understanding is cruelly laid bare in his confused rantings about Lucy. A main claim seems to be that evilutionists have tampered with the evidence. Lubenow’s claim seems to have made some impact among the most radical kooks, such as one Nick Lally, who is behind this exasperatingly ignorant rant. The conspiracy gambit is of course common when creationists are dealing with the interpretation of fossil finds; see, for instance, the hilariously ignorant quote by one Thomas Kendall here.

The most famous of Lubenov’s amazing claims are provided in his book “Bones of Contention” from 1992. A good discussion of it can be found here; another one is here.

Diagnosis: Utterly ignorant crackpot with an unrevisable premise and enough confirmation bias (and sufficient lack of critical thinking skills) to twist anything into evidence for/against anything. Complete boulderbrain, but he enjoys some respect among his peers.

#243: Sue Lowden (and her opponent during the nominations)

2011-09-05T13:30:00.002-04:00

Suzanne Parkinson "Sue" Pluskoski Lowden is the former Chairwoman of the Nevada Republican Party and former State Senator in Nevada. She lost the Republican nomination in the 2010 United States Senate election in Nevada to the incomparably stupid bigot Sharron Angle, who rose to fame after “A” had been dealt with in this Encyclopedia, who subsequently lost to Harry Reid because she was too obtuse, paranoid, incompetent and ignorant even for many rightwingers. (Ok fine you got us - we gave Lowden an entry primarily so we could write about Sharron Angle).

Lowden’s fifteen minutes of national fame arose as a consequence of her response to the healthcare reform. While discussing her preference for consumer-focused reforms and her support of Health savings accounts paired with a High-deductible health plan, Lowden (who had made some pretty stupid comments before) suggested that patients could pay cash and barter with their doctors for payment in order to reduce costs: “[B]efore we all started having health care, in the olden days, our grandparents, they would bring a chicken to the doctor, they would say I’ll paint your house, they would do... that’s the old days of what people would do to get health care with their doctors. Doctors are very sympathetic people. I’m not backing down from that system.” In spite of the apparent brilliance of the idea, she did receive some flak for what become known as the “bring a chicken to the doctor” suggestion.

Diagnosis: First and foremostly, Lowden is perfectly incompetent, to the extent that she (as opposed to blathering idiots like Bachmann) actually would manage to accidentally run over herself with a truck. As such, her presence has at least thus far unintentionally benefited rationality and sanity (as opposed to Angle, she might actually have beaten Reid if she hadn’t run herself over).

#242: Eddie L. Long

2011-08-30T08:48:00.003-04:00

Bishop Eddie Long is the senior clergyman at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, Georgia (approximately 25 000 members) and a successful proponent of the Prosperity Gospel. Unsurprisingly he has joined a very long list of ministers and televangelists by (September 2010) facing accusations of coercing young men into sexual activity. Long has responded by vowing to fight his accusers, describing his problem as “spiritual warfare” and comparing himself to David in David vs. Goliath (“I'm not a perfect man but this thing I'm going to fight. I feel like David against Goliath but I've got five rocks and I haven't thrown one of them yet”). “Gospel Today” has taken up the fight (Long is on the board of directors, but the publisher denies that Long has influenced their presentation).

Diagnosis: Bigotry, charlatanery and pure evil alone do not grant you an entry in the encyclopedia, but being a proponent of the prosperity gospel does, at least insofar as you actually believe what you preach (I have no evidence that Long does not). And Long’s responses to the allegations made against him are utterly bizarre. Hopefully this episode will undermine his status among his relatively significant number of fans.

#241: John Lofton

2011-08-29T10:41:00.006-04:00

Lofton is a paleoconservative political commentator, columnist and editor of The American View radio program (run by Michael Peroutka), after a long career associated with the GOP (and as an advisor to Pat Buchanan).

He has made numerous appearances on various political talk shows (for instance) and written columns for a wide variety of outlets but is perhaps most famous for his 1986 appearance on Crossfire in which he debated musician Frank Zappa about the Parents Music Resource Center's campaign to identify music albums unsuitable for children (it went viral again in 2006, apparently – I think this is it). Lofton’s arguments are so detached from anything resembling reality it’s rather hilarious (it's okay to censor music because "words mean something"; America has suddenly acquired an "incest problem" in the last 20 years (before 1986) because it was mentioned in songs (Lofton is unable to identify any); pop music encourages children to have sex with animals). His outrage over something in this exchange is also worth seeing.

Lofton is a genuine theocrat who literally believes that Biblical law should be the civil and criminal law of the US. That includes stoning for premarital sex (women, not men) and adultery. He is thus among the conservatives who “wish Ann Coulter would shut up”. He wishes that Ann Coulter would shut up because of the way she dresses (like a harlot); she is “[u]tterly lacking in discretion and thus standing out as a jewel of gold in a swine’s snout – and always wearing the attire of a harlot – this disgusting female, who says she is a Christian …” Yup, that’s John Lofton for you. He dislikes Sarah Palin as well; her claim that “the issue of whether moms with small children should or should not work outside the home is a "petty, little, superficial, meaningless thing" and “reveals, with a vengeance, that she is a hard-core feminist, with no Christian/Biblical view whatsoever of what a wife/mom ought to be.” Palin is, in other words, too liberal and not sufficiently Christian.

He is also an ardent fan of Ken Ham. The website Christian Worldview, run – it seems – by one Randy Pope, calls Lofton a “modern philosopher”, and as an illustration gives us this quote: “ALL of us have a "bias." The question is: "Is your bias TRUE?" If your "bias" is in accord with Scripture, the Bible, the Christ, it is true. If it is not, it is false.” The website is apparently not a poe.

Diagnosis: Lofton is pretty explicit that the Taliban is his ideal for how a society should be run. He is, in other words, clinically insane. His influence is probably somewhat limited, but he seems to be idolized by a not completely unsubstantial subset of the religious right’s religious right’s most fanatic wingnuts.

#240: Scott Lively

2011-08-29T09:12:00.004-04:00

We’ve dealt with mad anti-gay bigots before, but even the most insane among them rarely venture to the rabid insanity of Scott Lively (well, Bryan Fischer does, not unexpectedly). Lively is a whacko Taliban fundamentalist who blames gays for virtually everything (terrorism, Islam, natural disaster, communism, Obama, oil prices, you name it). He is most famous for writing, with Kevin Abrams, the book “The Pink Swastika”, in which they “argue” that gays were behind the Nazi Party. Yes. The German Nazis were really gays, or at least swayed by the gay agenda. The evidence is, well, unclear (but Lively emphasizes that these were not the feminine “swish” gays, but the brutal, ultra-macho “butch” gays). The Nazi party was appealing to the gays because:

“[the gays] are all fundamentally social outcasts and consequently have a community of interests which tends to make them think and feel more or less alike. […] homosexuals, too, frequently regard themselves as a special form of creation or as chosen ones whose destiny it is to initiate a new order […] The fact that underneath they feel themselves to be different and ostracized from normal social contacts usually makes them easy converts to a new social philosophy which does not discriminate against them [like … the Nazi party?].”

In fact, the atrocities committed by the Nazis were driven by the immoral urges of the gay Nazi elite. The well-known anti-gay laws and mass murders of homosexuals in Nazi Germany were just a distraction to conceal the fact that Nazis were gay.

According to Lively “There is a war that is going on in the world. There is a war that is waging across the entire face of the globe. It's been waging in the United States for decades, and it's been waging in Europe for decades. It's a war between Christians and homosexuals.”

Lively, who is the former head of the California branch of the American Family Association has also written “7 Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child” and “Redeeming the Rainbow”. He also runs the organization Watchman on the Walls, and has been involved in the infamous Ugandan anti-gay laws. In 2009 Lively, Don Schmierer (to be covered later) and Caleb Lee Brundidge gave a series of talks in Kampala on the gay agenda – “that whole hidden and dark agenda” – and the threat homosexuals posed to Bible-based values and the traditional African family. The talks (more on Lively’s actual talk can be found here) famously inspired the development of a private member's Anti-Homosexuality Bill in the Ugandan parliament. The bill called for the death penalty in some cases, and received international opprobrium. After Uganda was criticized for killing some homosexuals, Lively, in batshit insane angry mode, expressed his condemnation – of the criticism! Uganda is the victim here, of the international gay agenda.

Lively is also the president of the Abiding Truth Ministries, designated – unsurprisingly – by Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. You can read Lively’s open letter to the gay community explaining his motives and history here.

Diagnosis: Completely corrupted, raging crackpot bigot whose main goal seems to be genocide, Lively is an utterly repugnant human being (and a complete madman) who is already morally if not legally partially responsible for several deaths and should be indicted for crimes against humanity. And a really frightening number of wingnuts actually listen to him. Extremely dangerous.

#239: Jason Lisle

2011-08-28T09:51:00.004-04:00

Jason Lisle actually has a PhD in astrophysics (not just a diploma mill degree), and he has actually published scientific papers in astrophysics. You’d never have guessed from the drivel that flows from his pen and mouth. He currently works full time for Answers in Genesis (AiG). He is a master of the Ham Hightail, is one of the most central defenders of Young Earth Creationism alive, has deployed every creationist canard in the book, and boosts his points by appeal to epistemic relativism – in his writings you’ll find nuggets like this (long quote, but has to be given in full):

“Our worldview is a bit like mental glasses. It affects the way we view things. In the same way that a person wearing red glasses sees red everywhere, a person wearing “evolution” glasses sees evolution everywhere. The world is not really red everywhere, nor is there evolution everywhere, but glasses do affect our perception of the world and the conclusions we draw. We will find in [his book “The Ultimate Proof of Creation"] that the Bible is a bit like corrective lenses. Without "biblical glasses," the world appears fuzzy and unclear. But when our thinking is based on the Bible, the world snaps into focus: it makes sense […] evolutionists "see" the world differently than creationists. We have the same facts. But what we make of those facts is colored by our worldview. Thus, creationists and evolutionists interpret the same facts differently.”

So how do you explain the starlight problem when you believe in a 6-day creation 6000 years ago? Lisle’s solution is simple: “creation was supernatural, therefore cannot be understood scientifically.” So the inerrancy of the Bible is actually an axiom. He even published a paper in AiG’s “Answers Research Journal” claiming to have a more sophisticated solution and emphasizing that critics should have an open mind. The argument in the paper is: “The Bible must be true. Genesis says the stars were created simultaneously, on Day Four, 6000 years ago. This conflicts with relativity. Therefore relativity is wrong. Therefore The Bible must be true.” Even the dimmest student would spot the problem here, but Lisle proudly points out that “So far, no one has published in a peer-reviewed journal any criticism of this model.” [hat tip Rationalwiki]. It’s all like the weirdest sort of Alex Jones conspiracy, really – anything is taken to confirm the preheld view, even when it’s evidence against it.

Now Lisle is probably an intelligent guy in some respects (though his abilities are severely compartmentalized), and he is a good speaker who sometimes manage to hide the fact that all his claims are based on assuming (not providing evidence for) the inerrancy of the Bible, and then shoehorning (by twisting to the unrecognizable) other observations to fit that premise (he has to deny some substantial ones, such as relativity). But logic just isn’t his strong side. This hilariously ignorant rant has several times been given as a spot-the-fallacies exercise to critical thinking intro students (it is also discussed here). He has, oblivious to the fact that he wouldn’t recognize a sound argument if it hit him in the head, claimed that the existence of logic proves creation.

Fortunately he also expends energy attacking Old Earth Creationists. His book “Old Earth Creationism on Trial” (with Tim Chaffey) deals with the fallacies of OEC. As usual, Lisle is at pains to recommend keeping an open mind: “All ideas and theories should be subjected to rigorous self-examination, yet a similar self-critique is long overdue from the old-Earth creationists”. And follows it (many pages later) with: “Since the Bible undisputedly teaches a young earth, when someone claims that scientific evidence proves otherwise, we can be certain they are mistaken.” He doesn’t even begin to see the tension between these two claims. A discussion pointing out the most hilarious bits can be found here.

As a fitting conclusion, let’s bring on this quote (from an online debate): “I said I believe that to end the terrorist attacks, you need to kill ALL MUSLIMS. Which part of that was “cryptic” to you? Which one of those two words did you misunderstand?”

Diagnosis: Confirmation bias run wild – über-crank Lisle is apparently blissfully unaware of the fact that he has made an art of arguing in circles. He is pretty vocal but important mostly as the scientific alibi of Ken Ham’s gang (and what an alibi).

#238: Rush Limbaugh

2011-08-27T09:25:00.005-04:00

A short entry like this can obviously not do full justice to the epicenter of lunatic wingnuttery that is Rush “not a martyr” Limbaugh, so we’ll confine ourselves to a short list of randomly selected highlights.

One of the claims that best characterizes Rush “big, fat idiot” Limbaugh, is the reason he gives for not accepting man-made global warming – this is in response to a caller asking “Your belief in God, how does that tell you that global warming is a hoax?”: “I just intellectually cannot accept the fact that a loving God which has created all this beauty and has blessed this country – I cannot believe that a God like that – would punish the human being he created for progress, for improving the quality of his life.” This is an interesting take on the problem of evil. God punishing Haitians with an earthquake killing half a million people – not a counterexample to God’s love; punishing Western countries’ progress with no concern for the environment – inconsistent with God’s goodness. I think, however, that this belief excellently illustrates Limbaugh’s general pathologically narcissistic way of thinking. (Concerning climate change, he also said that the “alleged” scientific consensus “is just a bunch of scientists organized around a political proposition. You can't have consensus in science”. Anyone who fails to recognize the idiocy of that statement should at least read this). He has blamed Al Gore and environmentalists for the BP oil spill as well. The logic is unidentifiable.

Since he rejects manmade global warming, he also attempted to cover his back by claiming that the July 2011 heatwave itself was a government conspiracy to justify global warming.

By spring 2009, Limbaugh seemed to have become de facto leader of the GOP. Following Limbaugh’s claim that he was “wanting Obama to fail”, Limbaugh demanded apologies from Eric Cantor and Michael Steele for saying Limbaugh's comments were unacceptable. Both apologized.

Limbaugh is generally more well-known for his rank dishonesty and ignorance than for his lunacy, though there are good examples of the latter. Examples of the former are his commitment to family values while being caught returning from the Dominican Republic with a mislabeled bottle of Viagra, his calling – as a chickenhawk – soldiers who spoke out against the Iraq War "phony soldiers” while himself avoiding the draft in 1969 due to an “anal cyst” (lasting for years and years, apparently), and his promise to to leave the country if the Obama-driven health care bill passed: “I'll go to Costa Rica for healthcare.” (Costa Rica has universal health care). More on Rush and health care here, and this one is to the point as well. His claim that Obama created the recession as a payback for racism is a clear example of lunacy however, as is his denial of global warming mentioned above. And of course there is his claim that the Obama administration, always busy trying to undermine the country, was emphasizing the Aug. 2 date for raising the debt limit because Ramadan begins on Aug. 1.

Limbaugh is critical of feminism, maintaining that “[F]eminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society”. He also popularized the term "feminazi", referring to feminists "to whom the most important thing in life is ensuring that as many abortions as possible occur”; more here. And according to Limbaugh “the only thing cruel about the death penalty is last-minute stays.” On the Abu Ghraib scandal, he said that “This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation ... And we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release?”. And he has asserted that African-Americans are “left behind” socially because they have been systematically trained from childhood to hate America by figures such as Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, and the Obamas. To top it off, he recently argued against paying repairs to American natives by claiming that the natives were the real killers and real beneficiaries of the settlement of North America. His brand of Barton-style revisionism is insane in its combination of ignorance and bigotry.

More here. Some of the falsehoods peddled in his book “The Way Things Ought to Be” are listed here (and a good, but too polite discussion, can be found here). Pat Boone has compared Rush Limbaugh to Thomas Paine, but Boone is not generally recognized for his mental abilities. His take on the Holocaust is also worth a read. Limbaugh is also sympathetic to creationism, by the way.

For an extraordinary display of delusional projection, see him accuse Shephard Smith of cowardice and everyone for tribalism and attempting to divide the country. This degree of serious lack of self-awareness verges on (ok, crosses the border to) clinical mental illness.

Rush’s slightly dumber younger brother David is a columnist for WorldNetDaily, and shares his brother’s views, though lacks Rush’s affability and diplomatic skills. He is also more oriented towards standard religious fundamentalist themes.

Diagnosis: His martyr and persecution complex is intense, and Limbaugh lives it out through an unsophisticated combination of bigotry and ignorance. The very epitome of a delusional wingnut, this crank has, of course, far, far too much influence. He is a really contemptible being.

#237: Dan Lietha

2011-08-16T15:58:00.003-04:00

Dan Lietha is Answer in Genesis’s resident cartoonist (he has also illustrated various religious books, including Buddy Davis’s “When Dragons’ Hearts Were Good” – yes, dragons really existed and were meek during the time of Eden; after all the Bible suggests so). AiG publishes his strips CreationWise, After Eden, and Let There Be Truth. Some examples of his work can be found here, and here, illustrating pretty well where Lietha comes from. He seems to have learned a trick or two from Jack Chick (and perhaps from Family Circus) – and although Lietha prefers the strip format the difference seems primarily to be the form rather than content (though Lietha is less obsessed with eternal torture and the end of the world).

You can find some parodies of his work here. Lietha and the AiG didn’t take the parodies very well, by the way, and responded in the most predictable manner. The whole story is here (there is some nice discussion here as well).

Diagnosis: "Almost funnier than Jack Chick" is not a compliment to one’s mental capacities. I think we can let Lietha’s work speak for itself.

#236: Jonathan Levy

2011-08-13T12:53:00.003-04:00

Jonathan Levy has on occasion been the pathologically incompetent attorney for the incomparably insane Orly Taitz. Admittedly, no one would expect anyone serious to help Taitz – the queen of birthers – with her schizophrenic and incoherent attempts to obtain legal recognition of the fact that Obama was born in Kenya and is hence not rightful president of the US, and the bizarre situations arising in her wake. This time around, she appealed to the United Nations for protection (it is unclear what she wants to be protected from) – but Levy, who finally took her case, seems to be a new low. Levy couldn’t even manage to spell the president’s name correctly.

Levy has also appeared on the Alex Jones show babbling less than coherently about the Vatican bank and the Illuminati. His About Me page on Avvo is … interesting.

Diagnosis: Exasperatingly dense crackpot; seems to have a hard time aligning his worldview with anything resembling reality, but is otherwise probably harmless

#235: Yehuda Levin

2011-08-08T21:59:00.003-04:00

And still they come. Yehuda Levin is the Rabbi and founder of Congregation Mevakshei Hashem Synagogue in Brooklyn, New York. He is absolutely batshit insane and something of a kindred spirit of Fred Phelps.

Levin is Taliban-inspired terrorist material and a very loud religious fundamentalist who has a story of allying himself with evangelicals on social issues. He has been a vocal opponent of gay rights, and was involved in stopping a gay pride event in Jerusalem (the gays were there, apparently, to “attack The Holy Land”). He advocated the use of violence against the participants, saying “I promise that there's going to be bloodshed”. Last year he worked with Carl Paladino, and even prepared a rabid anti-gay statement for Paladino to read (which received national attention). Paladino later apologized for the statement, causing Levin to withdraw his support. His views on DADT are barely worth reporting. Levin also runs the website Jews for Morality, which says things like this.

Levin is also radically anti-abortion (he ran for mayor of New York City in 1985 on the Right to Life ticket). You can probably guess what rhetorical tactic he is using: the legality of abortion is a genocide, and bears as such many similarities to the Holocaust. You saw that coming, didn’t you?

In 2007 he was sent as an emissary by a groupo of Orthodox rabbis to Atlanta to perform an ancient prayer ritual to make it rain and end the drought in the South. Levin had invoked divine help by the same ritual in 1986, after which there was four days of rain: “[W]e wish to announce a program which we believe could curtail much of the disaster our country has been experiencing,” said Levin.

Diagnosis: A thoroughly despicable man, Levin is the kind of rabidly insane, hateful suicide-bomber material who needs some love and monitoring by responsible adults. He may have some influence, but he probably receives media attention because the media loves babbling maniacs like him rather than because of his number of followers.

#234: Terri Leo

2011-08-03T12:25:00.003-04:00

A.k.a. “Sultana of the Texas Taliban, Scourge of Scholars, Despoiler of Textbooks”

In a way the Texas Board of Education is the very symbol of American lunacy. We have already covered people such as Barbara Cargill and – the epitome of deranged bigoted bias – Cynthia Dunbar, and it doesn’t exactly help education in Texas that they’ve had the pathologically truth-challenged Terri Leo there either. This is the kind of work they do (and have done for a long time) – like her colleagues, Leo is adamant that the Bible and Barton-style historical revisionism, purged of “liberal bias” should be the foundation for education in Texas.

Leo is perhaps particularly famous for getting the children’s book “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?” by Bill Martin expunged from the elementary school curriculum (the motion was filed by the equally moronic Pat Hardy) because a Google search revealed that Bill Martin had also written a book on Marxism – never mind that this was a completely different Bill Martin. It is rather illustrative of how the wingnuts on the Texas Board of Education do their background search (and of how lunatically deranged they are). Leo lacks the self-awareness to realize that making this claim afterwards don’t reflect well on her mental abilities. More here.

Diagnosis: This “ghastly dim harridan” (Myers) is a zealous enemy of fact, truth, reason and knowledge. Leo would be a hilarious clown if she weren’t so dangerous.

#233: Mary Leitao

2011-07-29T12:11:00.004-04:00

The inventor of Morgellons Disease, the biologist Leitao found the term in a very old reference book and used it to describe her child's rash, which doctors described as common eczema. Fuelled by various sensationalist news stories, Morgellons has achieved a life of its own, despite the fact that few serious researches have found anything novel about the conditions (apart, possibly, from the fact that the patients may suffer from delusional parasitosis). The disease seems to affect a particular group of people predisposed towards mistrust towards “established medical science”, and the people doing serious discussions of the condition at morgellonswatch appears to have closed down.

No one doubts that patients are suffering, of course, but the "research foundation" (where Leitao is executive director) has already decided what’s going on. They have started with a conclusion rather than a hypothesis, and are hence working on making the data fit. Which is, of course, not how science is done. In fact, the little research there is in support of the diagnosis is often (well, consistently) rather poor, such as this one (where Leitao herself was involved).

This is, in short, one of the plagues of modern day healthcare. The afflicted people surely need treatment, but knowing about your own symptoms does not confer authority regarding what the cause of the illness, or the correct diagnosis, is. People who have encountered Morgellons usually ask for the medical establishment to show some empathy, be tolerant and open-minded – failing to recognize that it is they who have already decided on what the correct conclusions are (which is, of course, anything but open-minded), not those who are skeptical of the nature of the disease. Having reached the conclusion without evidence (and then attempting to fit the evidence to the conclusion) makes Leitao and her associates (such as Marc Neumann) crackpots (and that is the case even if it should – contrary to what evidence suggests today – turn out that she is, in the end, correct about Morgellons being a real disease).

Diagnosis: Surely worthy of empathy, and Leitao certainly has people’s best interest in mind; but she is definitely a crackpot, and as such, she may end up – unintentionally – doing quite a lot of harm.

#232: Brock Lee

2011-07-22T14:03:00.003-04:00

Brock Lee is an unimportant, local creationist in Owatonna, Minnesota, whose sole claim to fame is his sheer idiocy and the fact that his ramblings have been picked up by PZ Myers. He is apparently fond of writing letters to newspapers; for instance see here, where he claims that evolutionary biology (analytically) implies that as long as you are not having sex or are pregnant, you don’t count as a human and hence have no moral status. Because of this analytic connection, evolutionary biology is responsible for teenage pregnancies – teenagers are having sex because they wish to be human. I don’t think there is any point in trying to unravel the various layers of misunderstanding here.

He has also been involved in arranging the Minnesota Creation Science Fair.

Diagnosis: You can’t fake this. Moronic loon (Hovind-sycophant). Probably relatively harmless.

#231: Dave Leach (and Scott Roeder)

2011-07-11T19:06:00.003-04:00

Dave Francis Leach is an anti-abortion activist and publisher of the utterly insane, extremist newsletter Prayer & Action News. He also runs the web site The Partnership Machine. Both support the doctrine of “justifiable homicide” in the case of abortion doctors, and one of his subscribers was Scott Roeder, who cited the doctrine prior to the assassination of George Tiller. In the January 1996 issue, Leach reprinted the Army of God manual, which lists ways to damage abortion buildings from putting super glue in locks to two simple bomb recipes.

The Army of God, by the way, is a terrorist organization featuring members such as Clayton Waagner, Eric Robert Rudolph, Michael Bray, Donald Spitz, Shelley Shannon, and other known domestic terrorists.

Leach, while avoiding association with terrorists according to legal definitions, has nevertheless staunchly supported Roeder’s actions; he wrote a legal brief for Roeder, pointing out that shooting Dr. Tiller was justified by the Bible (and more obviously falsely, by various court rulings). Roeder was officially associated with the insane domestic terrorist organization “Operation Rescue”, which will be covered in more detail in a later entry.

Diagnosis: Totally insane, and demonstrably dangerous.

#230: Marcus Laux

2011-07-11T13:05:00.003-04:00

Not exactly a household name, Marcus Laux is in any case a very typical example of how woo is peddled. He is “a licensed naturopathic physician who earned his doctorate at the National College of Naturopathic Medicine in Portland, Oregon. He has been clinically trained in acupuncture, homeopathy, physical medicine, among other healing modalities.” His biography is here.

It’s all there. He chose the woo route because “[science-based medicine] doctors seemed more interested in money than their patients” and – predictably – because naturopathic medicine “looks beyond the symptoms to the source, treating you as a whole person rather than a bunch of separate, unrelated symptoms”. But of course, Laux initially thought naturopathic medicine was quackery, However, he “knew in [his] heart [i.e. rather than by evidence] that the natural path was the right path” (in short, he found fallacious appeals to nature extremely intuitively compelling). He is also coauthor of “Natural Woman, Natural Menopause” (with Christine Conrad) and “Top Ten Natural Therapies” (with Melissa Block).

His web page is here. Now, Laux is the founder of Qivana, a network marketing company peddling all sorts of wellness products (woo-based, of course – no, you don’t get a link) in what they call the “Qivana Qore” series (it even has “Qi” in the name to give them away).

Diagnosis: This is how great woo is done; while Laux may be a fraud, it's more likely he is completely oblivious to the fishiness of his approach to medicine or business. Not very influential or likely to become very influential, but he is still not unlikely to cause some harm.

#229: Wayne Laugesen

2011-06-29T13:04:00.002-04:00

To include the clinically insane Hungarian crackpot Ervin Laszlo in our encyclopedia would have been too much of a stretch, even though he does, in fact, occasionally write for Huffington Post (where else).

The next installment thus goes to columnist, gun right activist and journalist Wayne Laugesen. Laugesen writes for the National Catholic Register, Faith & Family magazine, and Soldier of Fortune. Laugesen is also a co-producer of Holy Baby! and Holy Baby! 2, multilingual prayer videos for Catholic children broadcast internationally on the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), and on New Evangelization Television (NET) in New York. His sycophantic Wikipedia vanity article must have been written by Laugesen himself (or perhaps a lunatic fan).

His main claim to prominence is his helpless defense of the Catholic church during the recent scandals. Laugesen has pointed out that the Catholic church is not worse off than other organizations in terms of the amount of child abuse, something which was hardly the point about the scandal (as opposed to the systematic cover-ups).

His batshit insane responses to criticism of his defense is, however, his main application for inclusion in the Encyclopedia.

He displays certain theocratic tendencies and bigotry in his stance on public observance of religion (national days of prayer etc.). His arguments are delightfully incoherent at best. He is, apparently, afraid of atheist extremists (Laugesen claims that e.g. the Columbine shooters displayed an evangelical adherence to Darwin) who are motivated by evolutionism and relies on certified loon David Klinghoffer to justify his fears.

Diagnosis: Relatively insignificant loon, but apparently a rather aggressively bigoted one.

#228: Lyndon LaRouche

2011-06-21T01:09:00.002-04:00

A.k.a. Lyn Marcus

Lyndon LaRouche is a legend. Perennially running for president, LaRouche manages to be a wingnut/moonbat on the radical left and the radical right at the same time. He has a severe messiah complex and runs his organization like a fundie cult, and is – fortunately – insane enough to be rather toothless.

So why should you vote for LaRouche (given that he – as he certainly will – runs for president again)? Among the issues LaRouche is firm on, and that no one else seems to deal with effectively are (more details here):
- Using tactical nukes to build a canal across Africa to solve the world's water crisis.
- Break the Satanist conspiracy between Henry Kissinger (and/or George Soros), the Queen of England, ADL, Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund that controls the world’s drug trade.
- Avoiding the imminent global economic collapse (which has been immediately around the corner since the 60s, apparently). His suggestions on how to deal with it are rather diffuse.
- Banish rock & roll (especially the Beatles), which is a tool used by British Intelligence to control American minds. In fact, according to LaRouche, British liberalism is the main threat to the world at present, and they are secretly working to take over the world and bring it back to the dark ages (other conspiracy theories are dismissed as British propaganda).
- Remove any trace of the politics of the betrayer Barack Obama (LaRouche’s followers have compared Obama to Hitler, but were staunch supporters of John Kerry); in fact LaRouche has called for the impeachment of Obama.
- Dismiss and end the propaganda for the fraudulent idea of global warming (a conspiracy).
- Drawing on the resources of the already existing (worldwide) LaRouche Youth Movement to do, well, whatever youth movements do? (It really exists, btw, and bears all the hallmarks of a cult; the spokesperson is one Barbara Boyd and it seems to be led by Lakesha “Kesha” Rogers, a certified nutcase.

LaRouche was originally a Trotskyist (under the name Lyn Marcus), instigating several labor strikes among students during his leadership of the sectarian leftist National Caucus of Labor Committees (LaRouche promoted the use of physical violence, however, against his competitors in the Communist Party). He established relations to the extreme right – e.g. Willis Carto’s Liberty Lobby – during Reagan (particular over drug policy and staunch opposition to environmentalism). He eventually turned from (some semblance of confused) Marxism to anti-Semitism. This quote, from 1978, is, uh, interesting: “America must be cleansed for its righteous war by the immediate elimination of the Nazi Jewish Lobby and other British agents from the councils of government, industry, and labor" (more quotes here).

He also erected a quite wide-ranging intelligence network and a surprisingly large international organization (or somewhat militia like cult) with ties to a frighteningly many questionable regimes, including South Africa’s apartheid regime and Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party. He also achieved a certain success in the 80s, before being imprisoned for tax evasion (sharing a cell with Jim Bakker). LaRouche’s followers are known to be among the most persistent at comparing Obama to Hitler. They’re still running a variety of fronts and publications (including the crackpot science cesspool “21st century Science and Technology”, known in particular for its rabid and completely unscientific papers arguing (ranting) against global warming). This one is worth a visit.

More here. This one seems to have gone a little over the top, however.

Diagnosis: Schizophrenic, megalomaniac raving lunatic who seems to wish to establish a socially conservative, fiscally socialist political system based on cult-like worship of the strong man (himself). That political system has been tried before. Fortunately LaRouche doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of implementing it in the US, despite the fact that he has a frighteningly large number of followers.

#227: Robert Lanza

2011-06-21T00:59:00.002-04:00

Robert Lanza is an American Doctor of Medicine, scientist, Chief Scientific Officer of Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) and Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He’s got his credentials in order, and – as his Wikipedia article also emphasizes (exclusively) – he has done some important research on and development of stem cell technology. He is, in other words, one of the good guys.

In his spare time, however, Lanza likes to fight reality – he seems to be something of a megalomaniac – by writing tripe for – you guessed it – Huffington post and by developing his own, shall we say controversial, ideas about how the universe hangs together (his book “Biocentrism” received some attention). In these he deploys the worst kinds of quantum woo and bad math and enters into a problematic relation with mereology (the fallacy of division seems to be one he never quite managed to grasp). A good example is the, uh, fascinating and dubiously coherent “What happens when you die? Evidence suggests time simply reboots”.

Humans never die, you see, because we are only energy, and our constituents only get rearranged (in other words, Lanza got stuck on Goodman-style extensional mereology and hardcore nominalism – he also seems to gleefully adopt while failing to recognize the solipsistic element of his view). He backs this up by – of course – further babble about how reality works at the quantum level. More here.

You’ll read gems like “Biocentrism tells us space and time aren't objects -- they're the mind's tools for putting everything together” or “Quantum theory ended the classical view that particles exist if we don't perceive them.” Knowing nothing about the literature on consciousness, Lanza asserts that consciousness is a mystery to physics and draws, from that assertion, the conclusion that the universe is (at least in a sense) created by the mind. More here. Thing is, you need this idea to understand why the physical constants are so fine-tuned for life (ah, the anthropic principle so beloved by creationists, but Lanza does at least not go down that road): “At the moment, there are only four explanations for this mystery. One is to argue for incredible coincidence. Another is to say, "God did that," which explains nothing even if it is true. The third is to invoke the anthropic principle's reasoning that we must find these conditions if we are alive, because, what else could we find? The final option is biocentrism pure and simple, which explains how the universe is created by life. Obviously, no universe that doesn't allow for life could possibly exist; the universe and its parameters simply reflect the spatio-temporal logic of animal existence.” I hope anyone with a background in probability theory or critical thinking can spot the delightful plethora of fallacies invoked in that paragraph.

He also reacts to dismissals in a fairly typical crackpot manner.

Yup. Respectable scientist Lanza’s alter ego is a mixture of Deepak Chopra and Denyse O’Leary (and Lawrence LeShan) – without the religious insanity, admittedly, but with enough crackpottery to not sustain a perpetual motion machine. It is, frankly, not a completely uncommon situation for otherwise respectable scientists.

Diagnosis: Crackpot, and as cranky as they come (despite his real and respectable daytime job). Seems to have gained some prominence in the Chopra-inspired community.

#226: Christopher M. Langan

2011-06-16T13:59:00.002-04:00

Langan is an American autodidact whose IQ has (been reported by various media sources to have) been measured at between 195 and 210. Typical fare for less serious news outlets, Langan, who has been called “the smartest man in America”, rose to prominence in while working as a bouncer on Long Island. He subsequently developed his own “theory of the relationship between mind and reality” (note the curious formulation) which he calls the “Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe (CTMU)” (the fact that CTMU had a Wikipedia entry was cited by John Farrell as an example of Wikipedia’s untrustworthiness). Langan has been quoted as saying that "you cannot describe the universe completely with any accuracy unless you're willing to admit that it's both physical and mental in nature" and that his CTMU "explains the connection between mind and reality, therefore the presence of cognition and universe in the same phrase". He also claims that "you can prove the existence of God, the soul and an afterlife, using mathematics."

I guess most readers see where this is going. Langan apparently dropped out of university because he was too smart. Gladwell reports that while his work on the CTMU is profound (i.e. “can-be-understood-by-perhaps-only-a-handful-of-people” profound, a.k.a. “it-both-is-and-is-not” Buddhist profound), “without academic credentials, he despairs of ever getting published in a scholarly journal”. Uh-oh. Apparently Gladwell is unfamiliar with the peer review process. CTMU seems, by the way, to be just a mixture of Berkeley’s idealism with some woo-processed, half-baked physics and complete mathematical ignorance plastered onto it. It is truly silly.

Langan is a fellow of the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (ISCID) – yes, that’s Dembski’s group, and it promotes intelligent design creationism (the society’s journal (newletter) is also the only place where Langan’s musings have been published). Langan even contributed a chapter to Uncommon Dissent (edited by Dembski); he has elsewhere said that he “believe[s] in the theory of evolution” as “one of the tools used by God to create mankind”. Fair enough. The quote continues thusly: “Mankind is then a participant in the creation of the universe itself, so that we have a closed loop. I believe that there is a level on which science and religious metaphor are mutually compatible” and “just as the mind is real, reality is in some respects like a mind. But when we attempt to answer the obvious question "whose mind?", the answer turns out to be a mathematical and scientific definition of God”. Spot the argument from word-salad here. And by nonsense-introduction, Langan points out that “[t]his implies that we all exist in what can be called "the Mind of God", and that our individual minds are parts of God's Mind.”

So there you have him, “the smartest man in America”. Profound like a mid-level Buddhist monk with +2 confabulation skills causing “awe” when you fail your intelligence or wisdom saving throw.

Diagnosis: Super-crackpot. This is really a sad story about media exploitation. Fortunately, Langan probably doesn’t have much impact (as with most celebrities of his ilk, the interest soon dies out).

#225: Tim LaHaye

2011-06-13T16:52:00.002-04:00

Timothy LaHaye is an evangelical Christian minister, author, speaker, a primal force at the most insane fringes of American fundamentalism, and one of the more dangerous loons on our list. He has written more than 50 books, both fiction and non-fiction. He is best known for the apocalyptic series of novels titled “Left Behind”, written with former sportswriter Jerry B. Jenkins (Jenkins seems to have actually written the books, though the story and ideas are LaHaye’s).

The Left Behind series depict the Earth after the pretribulation rapture (LaHaye seems to think of the books as something more than fiction – apparently Obama is about to bring on the Rapture). The series includes 12 titles in the adult series, but also juvenile novels, audio books, devotionals, graphic novels, and even video games. It has been uncannily popular, with total sales surpassing 65 million copies and seven titles in the adult series reaching #1 on the Times bestseller lists (Jerry Falwell said, concerning the first book, something to the effect that it was the most important book for Christianity since the Bible). There are also three movies, promoted by Grace Hill Media starring Kirk Cameron (who else). Also look out for a brief guest appearance by John Hagee.

LaHaye has, apart from his literary antics, promoted (or founded) numerous groups to promote his insanity, such as the Council for National Policy, back when he was the head of Falwell’s Moral Majority. In 1979, he helped to establish the Institute for Creation Research, along with Henry Morris. In the 1980s, LaHaye founded the (radically insane) American Coalition for Traditional Values (Andrea Lafferty’s organization) and the Coalition for Religious Freedom, currently run by James Lafferty, the husband of yesterday’s Andrea Lafferty), and the Pre-Tribulation Research Center along with Thomas Ice (covered earlier) in 1998, dedicated to producing material that supports a dispensationalist, pre-tribulation interpretation of the Bible. Tim is also connected to the John Birch Society, and played a significant role in getting the religious right to support George W. Bush for the presidency in 2000 (he has later cast his vote for Huckabee, an outspoken fan of LaHaye’s Left Behind series). He also co-hosted (with Dave Breese) in the prophecy television program The King Is Coming (partially the foundation of his delightfully paranoid mixture of conspiracy theories and batshit crazy Rapture-porn in his book “The Rapture”). LaHaye has furthermore contributed millions of dollars Liberty University, earmarked for its student center and “LaHaye’s School of Prophecy”, which opened in January 2002. He is, finally and unsurprisingly a historical revisionist of the David Barton school, though more extreme.

Oh, there’s more. LaHaye believes in the Illuminati, a “satanically-inspired, centuries-old conspiracy to use government, education, and media to destroy every vestige of Christianity within our society and establish a new world order”. The Illuminati is, in fact, just one of many groups he believes are working to "turn America into an amoral, humanist country, ripe for merger into a one-world socialist state”, together with secretive, cabalistic, satanic groups such as the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, Harvard and Yale universitites, and the Democratic Party. LaHaye described his views in the book “Mind Siege”, written with David Noebel. In fact, according to LaHaye, if you are not a biblical literalist, you are a tool of the antichrist.

In 1978 LaHaye published “The Unhappy Gays” (a.k.a. “What Everyone Should Know About Homosexuality”), describing homosexuals as "militant, organized" and "vile”, and arguing that gays share 16 pernicious traits, including "incredible promiscuity," "deceit," "selfishness," "vulnerability to sadism-masochism" and "poor health and an early death." LaHaye suggested that Old Testament death penalty for homosexuality would in fact be acts of mercy towards gays, and did as such call his own book “a model of compassion.”

Tim’s wife, Beverly LaHaye, is famous for following up his views on homosexuality. Beverly is the founder of Concerned Women for America, which is devoted to fighting the militant gay agenda and the gays’ attempts to recruit our children. The group has also stated their opposition to publicly funded HIV screening and publicly funded STD treatment (after all, these are effective weapons against homosexuality).

Diagnosis: Absolutely insane, and extremely influential. A real threat to civilization.

#224: Andrea Lafferty

2011-06-01T14:11:00.002-04:00

Andrea Sheldon Lafferty is the Executive Director of the Traditional Values Coalition , TVC, which means that we are dealing with yet another rabid anti-gay activist. In fact, the TVC endorses most of the traditional Traditional Values™, such as anti-abortion, anti-pornography, anti-immigration, anti-gambling, anti-drugs/alcohol/tobacco, anti-premarital sex, and pro-patriotism (meaning tea party ideology) and pro-converting infidels to Christianity. Lafferty's response to a Gallup poll suggesting a change in public opinion towards gay rights was that “Jesus didn't ask for a 'show of hands' at the Sermon on the Mount. We, His followers, should not ask America to vote on which of his teachings they choose to obey.” Lafferty is not known for honesty and critical thinking skills, but she made a disconcertingly high number of visits to the White House during Bush’s presidency. Lafferty is also on the record arguing (asserting) that Obama is using the stimulus bill to curb religious freedom at universities.

Lafferty is also the daughter of the organization's chairman, Louis P. Sheldon, famous for his links to the Abramoff scandal and for claiming that America is currently under siege by a dangerous Marxist/Leftist/Homosexual/Islamic coalition (i.e. gay rights activism) with Mao as their hero, and which is currently involved in a conspiracy against the TVC. Andrea Lafferty is married to James Lafferty, chairman of the Coalition for Religious Freedom, founded by Tim LaHaye and Robert Grant, whose goal is … exactly the same as TVC’s. James Lafferty was, among other things, outraged by Pete Stark’s admission of non-belief, invoking the whole spectrum of non-arguments in response.

Diagnosis: Kooky wingnut and fundamentalist; zealous, and part of Tim LaHaye’s web of delusional extremism. She has gained a name for herself, and must therefore be considered relatively influential.

#223: Peter LaBarbera

2011-05-31T15:12:00.003-04:00

Continuing the theme from the last couple of days, Peter LaBarbera is a relatively insane anti-gay bigot associated with WorldNetDaily, particularly notable for his complaint that there are just to many homosexuals on television. The fact that so many TV people are gay, LaBarbera contends, is the gay rights movements’ attempt at brainwashing children (and others) into thinking that gays are ordinary people with equal rights. A real cause for outrage, apparently. Furthermore, zeh gays are actually utilizing social media to infiltrate us with and organize their evil agenda.

LaBarbera is president of the group Americans for Truth [About Homosexuality] - which is really no more than a promoter of wild conspiracy theories. It is all about “the [apparently militaristically organized] gay agenda”, and rather shrill. Fighting the gay agenda is a tough fight, but one LaBarbera is apparently willing to fight.

His (official) main trouble with gay marriage is one of the more usual ones – it undermines the family. For LaBarbera, however, this seems to be an analytic claim.

Diagnosis: Insane über-wingnut (of the more predictable kind). Impact unknown.

#222: Stanley Kurtz

2011-05-31T15:02:00.002-04:00

Stan Kurtz is a social commentator, adjunct fellow of the Hudson Institute and Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, with a special interest in America's “culture wars” – and a name that seems to pop up frighteningly often. Kurtz is a staunch enemy of political correctness, which permeates his writings on the family, feminism, child rearing, religion, psychology, homosexuality, affirmative action, and similar topics. His screeds are widely published (National Review, Policy Review, The Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal, and Commentary). Kurtz holds a Ph.D. in social anthropology from Harvard and is as such brilliantly positioned to exploit that uncanny union of religious conservatism and post-modernistic relativism (that magic combination one often encounters in freshman college students).

He may be most famous for several editorials penned during the 2008 election cycle, bringing to light and discussing relationships between Barack Obama and people such as Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers. Kurtz's book “Radical-in-Chief” states that Obama is (very secretly) a socialist, and Kurtz seems to think that Obama and Ayers are still rather closely connected (the book seems, for instance, to have short-circuited the last remaining operative synapses of Robert Ringer).

He is, predictably, very afraid of ze gays, and is indeed counted as a major mover and shaker by many on the farthest fringes of the anti-gay movement. Kurtz has, for instance, pointed out that “... most gays and lesbians do not want to marry each other. That would entangle them in all sorts of legal constraints. Who needs a lifetime commitment to one person? The intention here is to destroy marriage altogether. With marriage as we know it gone, everyone would enjoy all the legal benefits of marriage (custody rights, tax-free inheritance, joint ownership of property, health care and spousal citizenship, etc.,) without limiting the number of partners or their gender. Nor would ‘couples’ be bound to each other in the eyes of the law. This is clearly where the movement is headed." The occurrence of “clearly” appears without argument, of course, but I am not sure this is the main problem with this piece of reasoning. In his writings on gay marriage Kurtz does not consistently avoid hysteria; discussed here.

The previous president of Generation Rescue, this Stan Kurtz is (most probably) a different person, but an equally looney one who claims to have single-handedly cured children from vaccine-induced autism. That kind of guy.

Diagnosis: Shrill and tiresome wingnut maniac who specializes in incoherently inferring idiocy from insane premises. Relatively famous and as such moderately dangerous (as is his name brother at Generation Rescue).

#221: David Kupelian

2011-05-31T14:46:00.002-04:00

Kupelian is Managing Editor of WorldNetDaily, boldly assrting that the WorldNetDaily “serves as your watchdog on government 365 days a year. We guard your priceless freedoms by aggressively exposing corruption and evil everywhere, and by championing good.” His contributions are sufficiently batshit insane to have made it even to whale.to. His book is “The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised as Freedom” – the topic is, predictably, “how atheism is being sold to the US”, containing nuggets such as the “sexual revolution” being really a (covert) action to promote pedophilia. Really, the mantra of the book is “ze gays are coming, ze gays are coming!”. In general, Kupelian is simply shocked that people like Hitchens, Harris and Stenger are allowed to publish books in the Christian Nation that is the US.

A valiant fighter in the war against strawmen, Kupelian was also avidly worried about what would happen to the US if a Democrat was elected president in 2008 (“How Hillary will lead America to Hell” was his slightly less than reality-based WorldNetDaily screed discussing such topics). “The damage that will occur to America if Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama is elected president will go far beyond what we can rationally anticipate on the policy level,” says Kupelian. Since, as he says, we can't rationally anticipate the horrible damage Hillary will do to the country, he proceeds to irrationally anticipate those damages (hat-tip to Ed Brayton).

He is also the originator of the following, glorious quote: “Sex is sacred. For millennia, this biblical principle was the bedrock moral value of the Western World.”

Diagnosis: Reality-challenged (well, batshit insane) wingnut who seems positively shallow even when compared to his boss, the clinically insane Joseph Farah. Kupelian is not without impact, and that fact is pretty darn scary.

#220: Gary Kreep

2011-05-31T00:10:00.002-04:00

The aptly named Gary Kreep is one of the more notable elements of the birther movement. Kreep is the executive director of the United States Justice Foundation (it’s truly insane piece of wingnuttery), a California-based non-profit organization dedicated to undermining Obama’s presidency. He has been known to team up with Orly Taitz, which has not exactly been beneficial to his (already completely lunatic) cause.

He has also, apparently, sued the Department of Homeland Security for its targeting of conservatives (warning: this site, run by one Trevor Loudon, is an utterly insane conspiracy theory website).

More here.

Diagnosis: Rabid wingnut whose misguided fury has blinded him to anything remotely resembling reality. His impact is uncertain, and the birther movement appears to be on the decline now, but it may be worth keeping an eye on him.

#219: Joe Kovacs

2011-05-30T09:35:00.002-04:00

Joe Kovacs is the executive news editor for World Net Daily. That alone should qualify him for an entry, but Kovacs hasn’t been lazy contributing to his candidacy. Among his more interesting “articles” is his musings about whether lunar eclipses signal the return of Jesus (a good example of the kind of rigor and sense of accuracy you would expect from a news editor of World Net Daily). Another example of how Kovacs and the WND hive runs business is this one.

Kovacs has also argued that Easter is a pagan holiday that should not be celebrated by Christians (including a couple of hilarious fails).

Diagnosis: Hardcore fundamentalist engaged in a desperate fight against truth, evidence, accuracy and reason. He may not be the biggest name associated with World Net Daily, but he is an excellent, living illustration of what kind of news outlet this really is.

#218: Judy Zebra “JZ” Knight

2011-05-29T13:40:00.003-04:00

A.k.a. Judith Darlene Hampton
A.k.a. Ramtha

Ramtha is, according to the press releases, a dead guy who led a huge army to conquer two thirds of the earth some 35,000 years ago. His main opponents were the Atlanteans, and the battle apparently led to huge, cataclysmic disasters. As a token of his goodwill, Ramtha is currently warning us about similar cataclysmic changes in the near future, so apparently we have to prepare. Ramtha also seems to have remarkable insights into various conspiracies, illuminati-type, ruling the world at the moment, and very up-to-date (read “trendy”) new age fads, including quantum woo and “the Secret”-style fluff and snowflakes magical thinking (“you are God” is one of Ramtha’s messages to mankind).

Being dead is no hindrance to spreading the word, and Ramtha is letting himself be channeled by JZ Knight (of Yelm, Washington), who makes a living selling books containing Ramtha’s advice and various healing trinkets (with her husband, James Flick). More here.

To help spread Ramtha’s important messages to mankind, Knight also opened Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment (rather a cult, really) which takes approximately 6000 students yearly and teaches them to utilize their inner wisdom and create their own reality (post-modernism is the best friend of stuff like this). Among the important courses offered is “breathing”, which seems less interesting than the various classes focusing on drug use (through which the students are sent on their to becoming as "enlightened" as other shamans, or even "real magicians" who can alter the world and reality at will). Among the powers good students will obtain are (seriously!) raising the dead, freezing a rocket in mid-air, make gold appear out of thin air, and predicting the future. It is unknown whether the school has produced any GPA above 2.0 yet. Eventually psychic progress will lead to "ascension" of the body into the "Void", what Knight calls the ultimate spiritual state (an uncanny version of “graduation” it seems). Students also learn psychokinesis, telepathy, clairvoyance, other ESP skills, and that HIV is nature’s way to get rid of homosexuality. To ensure obedience, the school teaches that “unless students remain faithful to Ramtha, they will become prey of the "lizard people", and that the ancient figure of Jehovah would return to earth accompanied by lizard people, in a spaceship” (no kidding!). The school’s official webpage is here; their newsletter is here. It’s a little difficult to find the school’s faculty and staff, but former teachers have included the Wayne Allen Geis, Ruth Beverly Martin, spiritual teacher Whitewind Weaver (whom Knight later sued), and school administrator Mike Wright.

Somewhat controversially, Knight has encouraged her students to engage in tax evasion (since the government is an illusion and the US will be invaded by Chinese communists right away).

Among the school’s more successful ventures was the creation of the movie “What the Bleep Do We Know”.

J.Z. Knight was previously heavily promoted by the clinically delusional Shirley MacLaine.

As an interesting aside, Don & Carol Croft (covered earlier) seem to think that she is some kind of front for alien lizard people, Tavistock and the Rothschild family, and (like many psychics) is secretly working to open some time tunnels or other. They talk about “Ramtha hives” of lizard people. It is not completely clear and has something to do with Montauk and Al Bielek (also covered earlier) – try to make sense of it yourself; also covered in this, uh, remarkable diary.

Diagnosis: The very queen of new age insanity, one step up from Deepak Chopra. Severely mentally challenged, and in fact rather dangerous.

#217: Dennis Paul Knicely

2011-05-29T13:32:00.002-04:00

Dennis Paul “Dr.” Knicely runs a website called “Healingnews”, which is, basically, exactly what you think it is. Knicely claims to be able to heal pretty much every ailment known to man with fluff, woo and positive thinking (a remarkable remedy – if you didn’t get well, you just didn’t think positively enough). The website has some original content, but for the most part it collects links to all sorts of health-related new age fluff, preferably of the less reality-affected kind.

And do you know what the best part is? The website provides us with the “scientific validation of alternative medicine” as well (Tracy Planinz’s multi-part series, including the validation of homeopathy, herbs, and acupuncture, unfortunately without a trace of science or validation.

In short, his webpage has everything; super-foods, anti-ageing, mind-body-spirit balance, prosperity (law of attraction), detox, drum circles, cancer denialism, mercury dental fillings, Frankenfoods (all modified foods: “There is a systemic illness in modern society: Most are simply so "numb" from constant exposure to chemicals and poisons everywhere they go”), magical plants, anti-vaccinationism (lots), the swine flu was a conspiracy/the swine flu is actually healthy for you (), and so on, and so forth. The most prevalent theme seems to be that prescription drugs are generally killing you, and all serious conditions can really be avoided (and remedied) by veganism (but greedy doctors will of course not tell you that). Knicely’s list of references includes such luminaries as Barbara Loe Fisher, Gary Null and Leonard Horowitz.

It’s all about finding harmony and opening your mind, you see. (The quack Miranda is cleverly hidden.)

Diagnosis: Knicely and his guest writers are, in short, more or less equivalent to healthranger Mike Adams, though the raging insanity is toned down, and while Knicely’s network is probably not unique in any way, it deserves an entry as a representative for this kind of drivel. Knicely is dangerous, of course, but probably not very influential.

#216: David Klinghoffer

2011-05-29T12:57:00.002-04:00

Klinghoffer, who has a bachelor’s degree from Brown, is a Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute (and author, for instance of the interestingly titled “How Would God Vote?: Why the Bible Commands You to Be a Conservative”), staunch proponent of Intelligent Design creationism, a frequent contributor to National Review, and former columnist for The Forward. Klinghoffer is the major peddler of creationism among orthodox Jews.

He has argued, famously, that if convergent evolution were true, then evolution would have led to Cthulhu. Literally. Since “Darwinists love him [Lovecraft]” (“Darwinists” are here supposed to be people like Ken Miller). More here. He has also been adamant that Darwin is to blame for the Columbine killings and several other incidents (and for Hitler, of course) – Klinghoffer is a standard Discovery Institute revisionist, in other words. A more original one is his attempt to blame Ted Haggard’s moral failings on Darwin.

He seems to have a strange view on the Holocaust.

Klinghoffer was the receiving end of Dr. Nicholas Gotelli’s famous response to invitations to debate creationists.

And for his truly insipid take on the Texas science standards (with Charles Garner), enjoy this one.

Diagnosis: Another shrill idiot who subordinates truth, evidence and reason to ideology, and in the most dishonest manner imaginable. As a part of that center of ignorance, the Discovery Institute, he has some influence, and he is certainly productive.

#215: Gordon Klingenschmitt

2011-05-29T12:47:00.003-04:00

Gordon Klingenschmitt is a former navy chaplain (removed by the Pentagon, but refuses to admit to having being thrown out), occasional columnist for WorldNetDaily, and vehemently insane. He is fanatically anti-gay and a fan of imprecatory prayer. He applied it, for instance, against Mikey Weinstein, leader of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The tone is fascinatingly old Testament: “Let their days be few, and replace them with Godly people. Plunder their fields, and seize their assets. Cut off their descendants, and remember their sins, in Jesus' name. Amen” (his second attempt is discussed here). Charming fellow, in other words.

Klingenschmitt is in fact a champion of religious freedom, but only if it is understood his way – i.e. as observing God’s first commandment. I am not sure he is a liar for Jesus as much as an ignorant moron and willful misunderstander for Jesus. He is, unsurprisingly, also a DeMar style revisionist and theocrat.

Klingenschmitt may have been thrown out of the military (as was Jim Ammerman), but people like James Linzey remain. And that is indeed cause for concern.

Diagnosis: Batshit crazy raging fundamentalist and nutjob (and Liar for Jesus). Probably too insane to be any real danger, but one never knows.